In the 2024 financial year, the company behind Epigamia narrowed its net loss by 74%, from Rs 67 crore to Rs 17.4 crore (about $1.8 million) on operating revenue of Rs 173.7 crore (about $18.1 million) — the best set of numbers in its history. It was also the year the company lost the man who built it. Rohan Mirchandani, the co-founder and chief executive who turned a failed ice cream parlour chain into India’s best-known Greek yogurt brand, died of a cardiac arrest on 21 December 2024, at the start of the very financial year in which his turnaround finally showed up on the balance sheet.
What happened next is the less-told part of the Epigamia story: an 18-month stretch in which a private, still loss-making dairy startup had to prove it could survive without its founder, while two of its early financial backers quietly fought over who would end up controlling it. This piece traces both threads — how a Mumbai ice cream brand became India’s Greek yogurt category, and what its ownership and leadership look like now that the founder is gone.
Quick facts
| Company | Epigamia, owned by Drums Food International Pvt Ltd |
| Founded | Drums Food International, 2013; the Epigamia Greek yogurt brand launched in 2015 |
| Founder(s) | Rohan Mirchandani and Ganesh Krishnamoorthy, with Uday Thakker as an early co-founder |
| Businesses | Greek yogurt, curd, mishti doi, smoothies and high-protein dairy snacks under the Epigamia brand |
| Latest FY revenue | Rs 173.7 crore operating revenue in FY24, up 3.3% year on year |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net loss of Rs 17.4 crore in FY24, down 74% from Rs 67 crore in FY23 |
| Listed | Private; no IPO |
| Market value / last valuation | About Rs 1,250 crore, reported as of December 2023 |
| Key shareholders / CEO | CEO Ritesh Gauba since May 2026; shareholders include Verlinvest, Danone Manifesto Ventures, Sauce.vc and the Mirchandani family |
What they do
Epigamia sells fresh, short-shelf-life dairy snacking products — Greek yogurt, flavoured curd, mishti doi, smoothies and high-protein products such as protein shakes and paneer — to urban Indian households who buy their groceries through modern retail, quick commerce apps and e-commerce. The company positions itself as a “better-for-you” alternative to loose, unbranded curd and traditional sweetened dairy, aimed at health-conscious, time-pressed shoppers in India’s larger cities. It sells through more than 25,000 retail touchpoints across more than 30 towns and cities, alongside listings on quick commerce platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart and e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, according to Indian Retailer’s report on the company’s May 2026 leadership changes.
The origin
Epigamia did not start as a yogurt company. Rohan Mirchandani, an NYU Stern and Wharton graduate who had been working in finance, teamed up with childhood friend Milap Shah and chef Ganesh Krishnamoorthy, who brought two decades of food and beverage experience, to found Drums Food International and build a premium ice cream brand called Hokey Pokey, according to Scroll.in’s account of the company’s history. Hokey Pokey ran live-kitchen parlours where customers picked their own mix-ins on a frozen cold stone — a novel format for India at the time, built around retail footfall rather than packaged distribution.
The founding insight that eventually produced Epigamia came from outside the founding team. While Mirchandani was doing his MBA, his mentor Shripad Nadkarni, a former Coca-Cola India marketing head, told him the ice-cream-parlour model had a structural problem: demand collapsed every monsoon and winter, yet rent and staff costs continued year-round. Nadkarni’s advice was to move from a retail-led ice cream chain to a packaged, year-round FMCG product. Mirchandani relocated to India in January 2013, at age 30, to build that packaged business, and a shelf-stable Hokey Pokey ice cream line reached stores in 2014, per Scroll.in.
The struggle years
The packaged ice cream line solved distribution but not seasonality — ice cream is still a summer product in most of India. In 2015, the team launched Epigamia, a Greek yogurt brand, specifically because yogurt does not carry the same seasonal swing, and it sold 10,000 cups in its first month, according to Scroll.in. But running two businesses on two incompatible supply chains — a frozen chain for ice cream and a short-shelf-life cold chain for fresh yogurt — with a small team and limited capital proved operationally unworkable. The founders chose to discontinue Hokey Pokey and put the company fully behind Epigamia, a decision Scroll.in reports the team framed internally by quoting John D. Rockefeller: “don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” It meant walking away from the product the company had been built around for seven years.
The second, more severe crisis had nothing to do with product or supply chains. On 21 December 2024, Mirchandani suffered a cardiac arrest and died at 41, according to The Week’s report at the time, published a day later (Business Today’s report on the same day put his age at 42). He had led the company as chief executive for the better part of a decade, through the pivot away from ice cream and into the fundraising rounds that built Epigamia’s national distribution. Drums Food International confirmed the death in a joint statement from co-founder and director Uday Thakker and COO Ankur Goel, who called Mirchandani “our mentor, friend, and leader,” per The Week. There was no named successor CEO on the day of his death — Goel and Thakker stepped in to run operations on an interim basis, with what the company later described, in Laffaz’s May 2026 report, as “its most difficult period.” A permanent chief executive was not appointed for another 17 months.
The turning point
The clearest before-and-after in Epigamia’s history is the 2015 pivot itself. Before it, Drums Food International was an ice cream company with a structurally seasonal revenue line and two supply chains draining a small team’s resources. The moment it discontinued Hokey Pokey and committed fully to Epigamia — on the back of 10,000 cups sold in the yogurt brand’s first month, per Scroll.in — it had, in effect, invented a retail category that did not previously exist on Indian dairy shelves: branded, packaged Greek yogurt. A decade later, that single-category bet had scaled to Rs 173.7 crore in FY24 operating revenue and distribution across more than 25,000 outlets, according to Founder Thesis’s 2026 account of the company’s financials and Indian Retailer’s May 2026 report on its footprint. Every subsequent funding round, and the eventual tussle over who would control the company, followed from that one decision to bet the business on a product category Indian shoppers did not yet know they wanted.
The money behind it
Epigamia has raised a reported total of about $60 million (roughly Rs 576 crore) across its life, according to India Entrepreneur’s and IndianStartupNews’s May 2026 reports on the company. Verlinvest, a Belgium-based family-office investment firm, has been the most consistent backer, present from an early funding round and still increasing its stake more than a decade later. The company’s biggest single disclosed round came in January 2019: a $25.58 million (Rs 182 crore) Series C led jointly by Verlinvest and Danone Manifesto Ventures, the venture arm of French dairy major Danone, with participation from DSG Consumer Partners and Cipla executive Samina Vaziralli, per Inc42’s report at the time. That round brought Danone — the world’s largest yogurt company — onto Epigamia’s cap table as a strategic as well as financial investor, a relationship that would matter later.
Epigamia’s valuation was last reported at about Rs 1,250 crore as of December 2023, a figure cited consistently in reporting on the company through 2025 and 2026, including by Founder Thesis and Indian Retailer. In May 2025, Agro & Food Processing reported that Danone Manifesto Ventures — which by then held about 30% of the company — was in exploratory talks to raise its stake to a controlling 60% by buying out Verlinvest’s holding, a move the outlet linked to a wider pattern of large FMCG companies buying up India’s health-food challenger brands (it cited ITC’s acquisitions of Yoga Bar and 24 Mantra Organic, and Tata Consumer’s purchase of Soulfull, as comparable deals). That report described the talks as still exploratory, and no acquisition was subsequently confirmed. Instead, on 25 August 2026, Inc42 reported a $20 million secondary transaction in which Verlinvest and the Mirchandani family increased their existing stakes and new investor Sauce.vc joined the cap table, while DSG Consumer Partners and Deepika Padukone’s KA Enterprises sold their shares. The deal moved no fresh capital into the company itself; it consolidated ownership among Epigamia’s longest-standing shareholders rather than handing Danone control, at least for now.
How it makes money
Epigamia earns almost all its revenue by manufacturing and selling packaged, branded dairy and dairy-alternative snacking products at a premium to loose curd and unbranded dairy, India’s dominant format for these categories. Production runs across eight factories, most of them co-manufacturing partnerships rather than company-owned plants, operating at about 85% capacity utilisation, according to Livemint’s reporting (carried via DairyNews Today in July 2026). Co-founder Ankur Goel said in that report that a planned new, larger facility would be funded internally, without a fresh capital raise — a signal that the business, while still loss-making at the net level, generates enough cash to fund its own capacity expansion.
The part outside observers tend to get wrong is the channel mix. Because Epigamia is a familiar name on quick commerce apps such as Blinkit and Zepto, it is often assumed to be primarily an instant-delivery brand. In fact, Livemint’s July 2026 reporting describes the company’s sales as split roughly equally across three channels: quick commerce, e-commerce and traditional general and modern trade retail. General trade — the neighbourhood stores and supermarkets that still account for the bulk of India’s packaged food sales — remains as significant to Epigamia’s revenue as either of the newer digital channels. Greek yogurt itself still supplies more than half of total revenue, even as the company pushes newer, higher-protein products to diversify beyond a single category, per the same report.
The numbers
Epigamia’s revenue has grown every year on record, but its path to reducing losses has been far less linear — until FY24, when the loss line moved sharply in the right direction. Figures below are compiled from TheKredible’s tracking of Drums Food International’s regulatory filings for FY22 and FY23, and from Founder Thesis’s 2026 report (corroborated by Livemint via DairyNews Today) for FY24, all in Rs crore.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (Rs crore) | Net profit/(loss) (Rs crore) |
| FY22 | 145.9 | (59.5) |
| FY23 | 172.0 | (67.0) |
| FY24 | 173.7 | (17.4) |
Two things stand out. First, revenue growth slowed sharply between FY23 and FY24 — from 17.9% to 3.3% — even as the company was cutting its losses by 74%. That combination points to a deliberate trade-off: less aggressive, discount-led expansion in exchange for a path toward profitability, a shift Livemint’s reporting attributes to FMCG veteran leadership brought in to run day-to-day operations during the interim period. Second, the FY24 figures reported are not perfectly uniform across sources: Livemint’s July 2026 report cites Epigamia’s own operating revenue for the year at about Rs 180 crore, slightly above the Rs 173.7 crore figure Founder Thesis attributes to the company’s filed accounts. The two are close enough to describe the same broad picture — revenue roughly flat to marginally up, losses cut by roughly three-quarters — but readers comparing the exact rupee figure across reports should expect this Rs 6-7 crore gap between company-cited and filing-based numbers.
Where the money comes from
By channel, Epigamia’s revenue is now split close to evenly across quick commerce, e-commerce and general/modern trade retail, according to Livemint’s July 2026 reporting — a genuinely three-legged distribution model rather than a company leaning on any single format. By product, Greek yogurt remains the anchor, contributing more than half of total sales even after a decade of category expansion into curd, mishti doi, smoothies and high-protein snacks, per the same report. The company has said it sells roughly three cups of product every second across the Indian market, a scale claim reported by DairyNews Today/Livemint that gives a sense of daily volume rather than a verified unit-economics figure. Geographically, the business remains concentrated in urban India — the more than 25,000 retail touchpoints Indian Retailer cites in its May 2026 report are spread across 30-plus towns and cities, with Middle East expansion reported as a stated ambition for 2025-26 in Business Today’s December 2024 report, rather than a confirmed current revenue stream.
The risks
The first risk is competitive intensity from both ends of the market. Livemint’s July 2026 reporting names Amul and Milky Mist — large, cash-generative dairy incumbents with deep cold-chain and distribution networks already in place — alongside venture-backed challengers such as Akshayakalpa Organic, as rivals expanding into the same yogurt and dessert categories Epigamia pioneered. A category Epigamia built from scratch in 2015 is, a decade on, no longer one it has to itself.
The second is leadership and ownership concentration risk, made concrete by the events of the past two years. The sudden death of a founder-CEO who had run the company for close to a decade left it without a permanent chief executive for 17 months, during which two long-serving executives ran operations on an interim basis, per Laffaz’s May 2026 report. In the same period, one of the company’s largest shareholders explored taking outright control by buying out another, according to Agro & Food Processing’s May 2025 report, before a subsequent secondary transaction instead concentrated ownership among Verlinvest, the Mirchandani family and a new investor, per Inc42’s August 2026 report. A company this dependent on a small circle of financial backers for both capital and strategic direction carries real event risk around who ends up controlling it.
The third is that Epigamia remains a loss-making business, even after its best year on record. A Rs 17.4 crore net loss on Rs 173.7 crore of revenue in FY24 is a large improvement on prior years, but it is still a loss, and the slowdown in revenue growth to 3.3% that accompanied it suggests the company pulled back on the kind of spending — discounts, distribution expansion, marketing — that had driven faster growth in earlier years. Sustaining profitability without giving up growth, in a category now crowded with better-funded rivals, is an unresolved test.
The takeaway
Epigamia’s most instructive lesson is not about yogurt at all — it is about what a founder actually needs to build for a company to survive them. Rohan Mirchandani spent a decade building distribution, brand recognition and a professional management bench underneath himself, including the COO and co-founder who ran the company for a year and a half after his death without either a customer-facing crisis or a collapse in financial performance. The FY24 numbers that came in worse only on paper — slower growth, still a loss — were, underneath, evidence that the business Mirchandani built did not depend on him personally to keep functioning. That is a harder thing to engineer into a company than any single product pivot, and it is the reason Epigamia had something left to fight over in 2025 and 2026, rather than nothing at all.
Frequently asked questions
What does Epigamia make?
Epigamia makes and sells packaged, branded fresh dairy and dairy-alternative snacking products in India, including Greek yogurt, flavoured curd, mishti doi, smoothies and high-protein products such as protein shakes and paneer, distributed through general and modern trade retail, quick commerce apps and e-commerce.
Who founded Epigamia, and when?
Epigamia is the flagship brand of Drums Food International, founded in 2013 by Rohan Mirchandani and Ganesh Krishnamoorthy, with Uday Thakker as an early co-founder. The company originally sold ice cream under the Hokey Pokey brand before launching Epigamia as a Greek yogurt brand in 2015.
Is Epigamia profitable?
No. Epigamia’s parent, Drums Food International, reported a net loss of Rs 17.4 crore in FY24 on operating revenue of Rs 173.7 crore. That loss was down 74% from Rs 67 crore in FY23, marking the company’s sharpest improvement in profitability on record, but it has not yet reported a profitable year.
What happened to Epigamia after Rohan Mirchandani’s death?
Co-founder and CEO Rohan Mirchandani died of a cardiac arrest on 21 December 2024. Co-founder Uday Thakker and COO Ankur Goel ran the company on an interim basis for about 17 months, until FMCG veteran Ritesh Gauba, previously of Pladis, Mars and Britannia, was named permanent CEO in May 2026, with Goel elevated to co-founder alongside his COO role.
Who owns Epigamia, and what is it worth?
Epigamia was last reported to be valued at about Rs 1,250 crore as of December 2023. Its shareholders include Verlinvest, Danone Manifesto Ventures, new investor Sauce.vc and the Mirchandani family; a $20 million secondary transaction in August 2026 saw Verlinvest and the Mirchandani family increase their stakes after Danone Manifesto Ventures had separately explored taking majority control in 2025.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- The Week, “Epigamia co-founder and CEO Rohan Mirchandani no more” — December 2024
- Business Today, “Yogurt brand Epigamia’s co-founder Rohan Mirchandani passes away at 42 due to cardiac arrest” — December 2024
- Inc42, “Epigamia Raises $25.58 Mn In A Series C Round Led By Verlinvest And Danone Manifesto Ventures” — January 2019
- Inc42, “Verlinvest, Mirchandani Family Raise Stakes In Epigamia In $20 Mn Secondary Deal” — August 2026
- TheKredible, Epigamia financial filings tracker — accessed September 2026
- Founder Thesis, “Rohan Mirchandani Built Epigamia to Outlast Him. A $20M Secondary Just Proved It Worked.” — 2026
- Scroll.in, “Epigamia: How the Greek yogurt brand from India came into existence and got its name” — accessed September 2026
- India Entrepreneur, “Ritesh Gauba Named Epigamia CEO; Ankur Goel Elevated to Co-founder” — May 2026
- IndianStartupNews, “Deepika Padukone-backed healthy snacks brand Epigamia appoints Ritesh Gauba as its new CEO” — May 2026
- Laffaz, “Epigamia Appoints Ritesh Gauba as CEO After Rohan Mirchandani’s Passing” — May 2026
- Livemint, via DairyNews Today, “Epigamia Expands Manufacturing Amidst Rising Competition in Dairy Sector” — July 2026
- Indian Retailer, “Retail India News: Epigamia Names Ritesh Gauba as CEO, Elevates Goel” — May 2026
- Agro & Food Processing, “Danone Looks to Take Control of Epigamia amid Rising Competition” — May 2025
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