Startup Deep Dive : Lahori Zeera — revenue grew 73% in FY25, but profit didn’t move at all

A ₹10 bottle of cumin soda from a Punjab factory closed FY25 at ₹540 crore in revenue, up 73% on the year before, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies cited by Entrackr (1 April 2026). Yet profit after tax did not move at all: it stayed at ₹25 crore, flat with FY24, even as sales grew by nearly two-thirds.

That contradiction — a brand growing faster than almost anything else in Indian beverages while its bottom line stands still — is the story of Archian Foods, the Punjab company behind Lahori Zeera. It sells a drink built on a home-kitchen recipe and a flat retail price, in a tax regime that already claims 40 paise of every rupee on the label before a single truck of raw material is paid for. How the company got Coca-Cola-scale distribution out of that arithmetic, and why its margins have not caught up with its revenue, is worth pulling apart.

Quick facts

What they do

Archian Foods makes and sells bottled, carbonated versions of drinks that Indian households have made at home for generations — a cumin-and-black-salt soda under the flagship name Lahori Zeera, plus lemon (Nimboo), spiced buttermilk-style Shikanji, raw-mango Kacha Aam and a cola variant. The core buyer is the price-sensitive, high-frequency shopper at a kirana store or roadside stall, mostly outside metro India, who is used to paying ₹10 for a small cold drink. Distribution runs through general trade almost entirely: more than 2,000 distributors carrying the range into over five lakh retail outlets across 18 states, built out from an original base in Punjab and Gujarat where cumin-soda drinking habits already existed.

The origin

The idea did not start as a business plan. In 2016, Nikhil Doda recreated a jeera-soda drink he remembered from childhood in his own kitchen, using cumin, black salt and lemon, and gave it to his cousins Saurabh Munjal and Saurabh Bhutna to taste. The three of them saw something that most large beverage makers had chosen to ignore: an entire category of traditional Indian flavours — jeera, shikanji, nimbu paani — that had never been bottled and distributed at national scale, left instead to small regional bottlers with no brand, no consistent quality and no cold-chain reach. They built their first batches on secondhand equipment and tested them the way a street-food seller would, handing bottles to auto-rickshaw drivers and roadside vendors before they ever spoke to a distributor. The company that grew out of that kitchen experiment, Archian Foods, launched Lahori Zeera commercially in 2017 out of a small facility in Punjab.

The struggle years

The early years were run on what people in the business call jugaad — improvisation with whatever equipment and cash were on hand — because the founders had no distributor network willing to take on an unproven regional drink. Their answer was to sell direct to retailers instead of going through the usual super-stockist layers, taking on the working-capital strain of advance payments themselves so they could prove real shelf demand before asking anyone else to carry the risk. That approach worked in Punjab and Gujarat, where cumin-based drinks already had a following, but it meant the business grew unevenly: production capacity lagged demand often enough that the company faced stock shortages during peak summer months, a problem founders have attributed to how capital-intensive it is to add bottling capacity and how long a new plant takes to commission.

A second, structural constraint has been there since the company’s first year of sales and never went away: carbonated soft drinks in India are taxed at a combined rate of 40% — 28% GST plus, until September 2025, a 12% compensation cess — regardless of how small or unbranded the bottle is. To protect its ₹10 price point against that tax load, Archian shrank its bottle from a standard 250 ml pour to 160 ml rather than raise the price, a decision that shaped the brand’s entire unit economics around volume rather than price. Distribution into eastern India, where jeera soda had no existing following and shipping costs run higher, has also been slower and more expensive to build than the home markets of Punjab and Gujarat, which by most industry accounts still account for the bulk of national jeera-drink volume.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after moment is the company’s first institutional funding round. Before it, in FY22, Archian was still a regional player: revenue of about ₹38 crore and a profit of roughly ₹2.85 crore, built almost entirely on its own cash and founder capital, present in a handful of states. In September 2022, Verlinvest, a Brussels-based consumer-focused investment firm, put in the company’s first outside capital — reported at around $15 million. What followed was not gradual: by FY23, revenue had jumped to roughly ₹215 crore, more than a fivefold increase in a single year, and the company’s state footprint went from about seven states to sixteen within the following year as it used the fresh capital to add bottling capacity and push into new geographies it had not been able to reach on internal cash alone.

The money behind it

• Series A, September 2022: Verlinvest invested a reported $15 million — Archian’s first institutional round. Accounts of the resulting valuation differ: The Arc puts it near ₹700-750 crore, while other reports (via Entrackr) put it closer to ₹900 crore; both agree the company’s value roughly tripled by the time of its next round.
• Series B, May 2025: Motilal Oswal’s private-equity arm invested ₹200 crore for a 7.14% stake, valuing Archian Foods at approximately ₹2,800 crore ($291.7 million at $1≈₹96.0, 18 September 2026) — confirmed by Snackfax (10 May 2025) and corroborated by The Arc’s reporting that the round tripled the company’s prior valuation.
• Cap table after the May 2025 round (Snackfax, 10 May 2025): founders’ combined holding fell from 76.21% to 70.76%; Verlinvest’s stake was diluted from 21.17% to 19.64%; Motilal Oswal took the new 7.14%.
• Total raised to date: approximately $46 million across three funding events, per Tracxn (retrieved September 2026).
• What each backer changed: Verlinvest’s 2022 cheque funded the capacity build-out and the jump from a regional to a multi-state footprint; the 2025 Motilal Oswal round arrived alongside reported talks with additional investors for a larger ₹400-450 crore raise (YourStory, May 2025), aimed at national scale-up, a Lucknow plant and category diversification beyond carbonated drinks.

How it makes money

The business is a straightforward manufacture-and-distribute FMCG model, but run on unusually thin per-unit economics because of both the price point and the tax structure.

• Price point: a 160 ml bottle retails at ₹10, a level the company has held even as it downsized from 250 ml to protect the price rather than pass on tax increases.
• Tax load: aerated drinks carried a combined 40% tax (28% GST plus 12% compensation cess) from the outset; the 56th GST Council meeting on 22 September 2025 removed the separate cess and replaced it with a flat 40% GST rate on the category.
• Cost structure, FY25 (Entrackr, 1 April 2026, citing RoC filings): procurement (raw materials and packaging) was ₹316 crore, or roughly 63% of total expenses, up 70% year-on-year; employee benefit expense was ₹40 crore; contractual staff cost ₹23 crore; transportation cost ₹52 crore, more than double the prior year and about a tenth of total spend; total expenses came to ₹499 crore against ₹278 crore in FY24.
• Margins: FY25 EBITDA margin was 10% and return on capital employed 14%, both a step down from FY24, and the company was, in Entrackr’s framing, spending roughly ₹0.90 to earn every ₹1 of revenue.
• The part people get wrong: a ₹10 price tag reads as a mass-market, high-margin play, but after the standard 40% tax bite and the retailer’s and distributor’s cuts, only a few rupees of the original ₹10 are left to cover raw material, packaging and logistics before any profit is booked — which is why revenue growing 73% in FY25 did not move profit after tax at all.
• Sales channel mix: general trade — kirana and roadside retail — has historically carried the large majority of volume, with the company only more recently adding modern retail, quick-service restaurants, railway catering and institutional channels such as schools to the mix.

The numbers

Figures below are standalone revenue and profit after tax in ₹ crore, drawn from The Core (FY22-FY23, citing company financial filings) and Entrackr (FY24-FY25, citing Registrar of Companies filings, 1 April 2026). Some other reports place FY24 profit after tax slightly lower, at around ₹22.5-23 crore rather than ₹25 crore — the gap likely reflects preliminary estimates published before the final RoC filing.

Where the money comes from

• Product mix: Lahori Zeera remains the flagship, but the wider portfolio of flavours — Nimboo, Shikanji, Kacha Aam, Masala Cola, Gimboo — has grown to account for a large share of overall sales, reducing reliance on a single SKU.
• Geography: Punjab and Gujarat, the original home markets where jeera-flavoured drinks already had a following, continue to carry the bulk of national volume; expansion into eastern and southern India has been slower, partly because the drink habit has to be built from scratch there and partly because of higher logistics cost to reach those markets.
• Channel: general trade (kirana and small retail) has carried the overwhelming majority of sales historically; modern retail, quick-service restaurants, railway pantries and institutional buyers such as schools are newer, smaller additions to the mix as of 2025.
• Manufacturing footprint: production runs out of plants in Punjab and Gujarat, with a Lucknow facility and co-packing partnerships reported as in the pipeline to add capacity closer to newer markets.
• The surprise: despite a valuation near ₹2,800 crore and revenue racing past ₹500 crore, the company still sells almost entirely through the same low-tech, cash-and-carry kirana channel it started with in 2017 — its scale has come from replicating a regional habit across more shelves, not from moving upmarket.

The risks

• Tax exposure baked into the price point: a flat 40% GST on aerated drinks (28% plus a 12% cess until the cess was folded in on 22 September 2025) applies regardless of brand size, and Archian has chosen to hold its ₹10 price and shrink bottle size rather than pass the cost on — a strategy that only works if volume keeps growing fast enough to offset thin per-unit margins.
• Competitive response from far larger players: Parle Agro has been expanding its own jeera drink, Dishoom, from a regional to a national footprint, and Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have both piloted Indianised, ethnic-flavoured SKUs in the same category (Storyboard18/The Core reporting) — companies with far deeper balance sheets and existing cold-chain and distribution networks that Archian took years to build from scratch.
• Margin pressure even as revenue scales: FY25’s cost data shows procurement costs growing 70% year-on-year and transportation costs more than doubling, both faster than the 73% revenue growth in percentage terms once compounded with other costs — which is why EBITDA margin and return on capital employed both slipped in FY25 even as the topline surged (Entrackr, 1 April 2026).

The takeaway

Archian Foods built a national beverage brand by taking a category the big multinationals had never bothered to industrialise — traditional Indian flavours sold at a very low unit price — and simply doing the unglamorous work of building factories, cold-chain and a distributor network for it before anyone else did. The lesson is not that a home-kitchen recipe can beat Coca-Cola; it is that in a market as price-sensitive as India’s, the company willing to run on razor-thin per-bottle margins long enough to prove the volume exists can out-execute rivals who are waiting for the category to mature before they commit real capital. The flip side, visible in Archian’s own numbers, is that this kind of growth does not automatically become profit: revenue can climb 73% in a year and still leave the bottom line exactly where it started.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Lahori Zeera?

Lahori Zeera is made by Archian Foods Private Limited, founded by three cousins — Saurabh Munjal, Saurabh Bhutna and Nikhil Doda — after Nikhil recreated a cumin-soda recipe at home in 2016. The brand launched commercially in 2017 in Punjab.

Who owns Archian Foods now?

As of the May 2025 funding round, the founders together held about 70.76% of the company, Belgian investor Verlinvest held about 19.64%, and Motilal Oswal’s private-equity arm held about 7.14%, according to Snackfax’s reporting on the round (10 May 2025).

Is Lahori Zeera profitable?

Yes. The company reported a profit after tax of ₹25 crore in both FY24 and FY25, even as revenue grew 73% to ₹540 crore in FY25, according to Registrar of Companies filings cited by Entrackr (1 April 2026). Margins narrowed slightly over the year as procurement and transportation costs rose faster than revenue.

What is Archian Foods’ latest valuation?

Motilal Oswal’s ₹200 crore investment in May 2025 valued the company at approximately ₹2,800 crore, according to Snackfax (10 May 2025), a figure corroborated by The Arc’s reporting that the round roughly tripled Archian’s prior valuation.

Where is Lahori Zeera manufactured?

Production runs out of company plants in Punjab and Gujarat, with a Lucknow facility and co-packing arrangements reported as planned additions to serve newer markets outside the brand’s home base in northern and western India.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr (Fintrackr), “Lahori Zeera revenue spikes 73% to Rs 540 Cr in FY25, PAT remains flat,” 1 April 2026
• Storyboard18, “Lahori Jeera FY25 revenue rises 73% to Rs 540 crore; PAT steady at Rs 25 crore amid rising costs,” April 2026
• Snackfax, “Lahori Zeera Bags Rs 200 Cr From Motilal Oswal, Eyes Rs 500 Cr Revenue In FY25 Amid National Expansion,” 10 May 2025
• Snackfax, “Lahori Beverages Nears ₹450 Crore Fundraise As Valuation Soars To ₹2,500 Crore,” 2025
• The Arc, “Lahori Zeera maker gets Rs 200 cr from Motilal Oswal, valuation triples,” May 2025
• YourStory, “Lahori Zeera parent Archian Foods is set to raise Rs 200 Cr from Motilal Oswal,” May 2025
• The Core, “How An Ethnic Drink Is Going All Out To Break The Cola Dominance,” 2026
• 30stades, “How three cousins built Lahori Zeera into a Rs 525 crore desi beverage business,” 2026
• A Junior VC, “Is INR 2,800 Cr Lahori Zeera Building the Thums Up For a New India?,” 2025
• Tracxn, Lahori Zeera company profile, retrieved September 2026
• Inc42, Lahori company profile, retrieved September 2026
• InstaFinancials, Archian Foods Private Limited (CIN U15549PB2021PTC054409) corporate record, retrieved September 2026

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