Startup Deep Dive : Zoff Foods — it broke even with 4 people after burning Rs 30 crore on a 350-person sales team

In FY24, a Raipur spice brand that had disbanded its entire 350-person sales force four years earlier posted ₹92.66 crore in revenue and a wafer-thin ₹20 lakh loss. A year later, in FY25, revenue rose 11% to ₹102.7 crore — but the loss widened to ₹17 crore, even as boAt’s Aman Gupta and JM Financial Private Equity kept writing cheques.

That contradiction — faster growth, deeper losses, and repeat backing from sophisticated investors anyway — sits at the centre of Zoff Foods’ story. The brand, run by brothers Akash Agrawal and Ashish Agrawal under the entity Asquare Foods and Beverages Private Limited, makes cool-ground whole and powdered spices sold mostly through e-commerce and quick commerce. Its bet is that scale first, margin later, is the only way to dent a market still 60-70% unbranded.

Quick facts

What they do

Zoff Foods sells packaged spices — whole, powdered and blended masalas — along with dry fruits and a smaller line of ready-to-cook gravies and marinades, to Indian households who have started buying spices online instead of loose from the neighbourhood kirana store. The company says it uses cool-grinding (air-classifying mill) technology that keeps processing temperatures below sixty degrees Celsius, which it argues preserves the essential oils that traditional high-heat grinding burns off, and packs the result in resealable zip-lock pouches rather than the paper or thin-film sachets most Indian brands use. Roughly half its portfolio by sales is whole spices, the category Akash Agrawal has repeatedly said is Zoff’s strategic core, with the rest split across powdered masalas, blends and the newer ready-to-cook range aimed at time-pressed urban buyers.

The origin

Akash and Ashish Agrawal grew up in a Raipur family with a background in the steelmaking business, and Akash’s own career did not start in food. He took an MBA and, according to his own and media accounts, joined the family steel business around 2010 before finding it saturated and heavily regulated. He then tried his hand at a technology venture, CheckedIn, a location-based social networking app — an attempt that, by his own account, cost him roughly ₹1 crore over about two years without finding traction, largely on team-building and cost overruns. The failure pushed him to look outside steel and outside software, toward a category he understood as a consumer rather than an operator: the Indian spice rack. The insight the brothers settled on was narrow but concrete — that India’s branded spice market was still tiny next to its unbranded one, that most branded players competed on price and shelf presence rather than on the actual freshness of the grind, and that a cold-processed, resealable product aimed at a younger, quality-conscious buyer could carve out room next to legacy names such as Everest and MDH. They launched Zoff in 2018 in Raipur, a base neither obvious nor convenient for a consumer brand chasing metro shoppers, but one that put them close to central Indian spice-growing belts in Madhya Pradesh and adjoining Rajasthan.

The struggle years

Zoff’s first attempt at scale nearly broke it. Between 2018 and 2020 the brothers chased traditional general trade — the kirana and wholesale network that still carries most of India’s packaged spice volume — and built it the expensive way: a field sales team that grew to roughly 350 people covering 20 states, backed by close to ₹60 crore of invested capital in infrastructure and people, as later recounted in Inc42’s account of the company’s growth. It was a bet that offline reach, not digital marketing, would be what made a spice brand real to Indian households.

COVID-19 cut that bet off at the knees. The 2020 lockdowns froze general trade movement overnight, and a sales model built entirely around field visits and physical shelf placement had nothing to fall back on. Zoff let go of its entire roughly 350-person sales team in 2020, after the general trade push alone had burned an estimated ₹30 crore, according to Inc42’s reporting on the company’s turnaround. There was no cushion and no backup channel already built — the company had to find a new way to reach customers with a skeleton team, or fold the general trade experiment into a loss it could not easily recover from.

The turning point

The turning point was not a single funding cheque; it was the decision, forced by the 2020 collapse of the general trade push, to rebuild the entire go-to-market motion around e-commerce with a core team Inc42 has described as just four people. On one side of that decision: a company that had spent roughly ₹60 crore building a 350-person offline sales force and had little to show for it beyond FY20 revenue of ₹25.79 crore and an FY21 loss of ₹11.86 crore, per Inc42’s account. On the other side, within about two years: an e-commerce and quick-commerce-led model that reached FY22 turnover of around ₹50 crore and, the company has said, its first breakeven quarter. The pivot was reinforced in February 2023 when Akash Agrawal pitched on Shark Tank India’s second season and walked away with ₹1 crore from boAt co-founder Aman Gupta for 1.25% equity — a deal that valued the four-year-old company at ₹80 crore, according to Entrepreneur India and Indian Retailer’s coverage of the episode, and that gave Zoff a marquee backer just as it leaned fully into digital-first distribution.

The money behind it

Zoff has raised money in stages rather than one marquee round, consistent with a company that spent its first four years bootstrapped and cash-strapped before institutional investors arrived. Tracxn puts its cumulative disclosed funding at $7.16 million across five rounds and nine investors as of 2026, though not every tranche has a publicly confirmed size.

• February 2023 — Shark Tank India (angel): ₹1 crore from boAt co-founder Aman Gupta for 1.25% equity, implying an ₹80 crore valuation (Entrepreneur India, Indian Retailer, YourStory, February 2023). This was Zoff’s first outside capital and its first celebrity-investor halo.
• August 2024 — Series A: ₹40 crore ($4.8 million at then-prevailing rates) from JM Financial Private Equity, via its India Growth Fund III, into the entity Asquare Foods and Beverages Private Limited (JM Financial press release and Entrackr, both August 2024). JM Financial’s own release cited a 40% revenue CAGR over the prior four years as its rationale, and the round funded brand-building, capacity and offline expansion.
• March 2026 — pre-Series B: $2 million (about ₹18.5 crore at $1≈₹96.0) led by existing investor JM Financial again through India Growth Fund III, with participation from Aman Gupta, per Inc42 and Entrackr, both dated March 2026. Proceeds were earmarked for general and modern trade distribution, quick commerce scale-up and brand spending.

No independently confirmed valuation exists in the public record for either the August 2024 or March 2026 rounds; a widely circulated ₹210 crore figure for August 2024 appears in aggregator listings without a named primary source, so it is not used here. The only valuation this piece treats as verified is the ₹80 crore implied by the 2023 Shark Tank deal, corroborated across three outlets.

How it makes money

Zoff earns the way most branded packaged-food D2C companies do: it buys or sources raw spices, processes and packs them under its own brand, and sells the finished pack for well above the price of loose, unbranded spice — the premium is the business.

• Revenue in: direct sale of packaged whole spices, powdered masalas, blends, dry fruits and ready-to-cook products through its own website, marketplaces (Flipkart, Amazon), quick commerce (Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart) and, increasingly, general and modern trade retail.
• Costs out: raw spice procurement (subject to commodity swings — Whalesbook’s March 2026 report noted jeera prices had crossed ₹60,000 per 100 kg in recent years), cold-grinding and packaging at its Raipur facility, and a fast-rising marketing bill — FY25 advertising spend roughly tripled to ₹12 crore as total expenses rose 32% to ₹120 crore, per Whalesbook’s March 2026 reporting citing the company’s FY25 filings.
• Where the margin sits: the company has said whole spices carry better unit economics than powdered blends because they need less processing and face less private-label competition; that is also why whole spices are roughly half of sales by the company’s own account.
• The take-rate question: Zoff does not publish a marketplace “take rate” because it is a first-party seller, not a platform — its exposure instead is to marketplace commissions and quick-commerce listing/ad fees, which are not separately disclosed.
• What people get wrong: a headline of “revenue crossed ₹100 crore” reads as a profitability milestone; the FY25 filings show the opposite — losses widened sharply in the same year, because the ₹100 crore-plus scale was bought with a tripled ad budget and a 32% jump in total costs, not achieved at flat spend.

The numbers

Figures below are as reported in company filings cited by Entrackr, Inc42, Whalesbook and the earlier account in businessremedies.com; unit is ₹ crore unless stated.

Note: an earlier account (businessremedies.com) described FY24 as narrowly profitable at ₹20.27 lakh net profit, while the FY25 funding-round coverage from Inc42, Entrackr and Whalesbook — all published together in March 2026, drawing on the FY25 regulatory filing that restates the prior year — describes FY24 as a ₹20 lakh loss. This piece uses the latter, more recent and multiply corroborated figure. Total FY25 expenses were ₹120 crore, up 32% year-on-year, with advertising spend roughly tripling to ₹12 crore (Whalesbook, March 2026). The company has told Businessworld it is targeting ₹200 crore of revenue in FY26 — a forward-looking, company-stated target, not an audited figure.

Where the money comes from

Zoff built itself as an online-first brand and is only now rebalancing toward physical retail.

• Quick commerce: about 50% of FY25 sales — Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, per Inc42’s March 2026 reporting; the company has called itself among the fastest-growing spice brands on these platforms, a company claim not independently verified here.
• E-commerce marketplaces: about 20% of FY25 sales — Flipkart, Amazon and its own website (Inc42, March 2026).
• General and modern trade: about 30% of FY25 sales — physical retail, the channel the brothers abandoned in 2020 and are now rebuilding deliberately and more slowly, reportedly across more than 20,000 outlets (Inc42/afaqs.com reporting).
• The surprise: a brand that nearly went under trying to build offline distribution the expensive way in 2018-2020 is, by 2025, using online-first scale as the platform to fund a second, more disciplined attempt at the same offline shelf space it once walked away from.

The risks

• Raw material cost volatility: key spice commodities have swung sharply — jeera futures and spot prices crossed ₹60,000 per 100 kg in recent years (Whalesbook, March 2026) — and Zoff, as a processor rather than a grower, has limited pricing control over its single largest input cost.
• Entrenched, better-funded incumbents: Everest alone reported roughly ₹3,850 crore in annual revenue (Whalesbook, March 2026) — nearly 38 times Zoff’s FY25 scale — and Everest, MDH and ITC all have decades of general-trade shelf relationships that a price war or heavier incumbent ad spend could use to squeeze a smaller challenger’s customer acquisition costs higher.
• Channel concentration and widening losses: with roughly 70% of FY25 sales running through online and quick commerce, Zoff is exposed to platform commission changes and ad-cost inflation on a small number of apps, and its FY25 results show that funding faster growth pushed the loss from ₹20 lakh to ₹17 crore in a single year as expenses rose 32% (Whalesbook, March 2026) — a trajectory that has to bend before the next funding round or an IPO becomes realistic.

The takeaway

Zoff’s real lesson is not “pivot to e-commerce” — plenty of Indian D2C brands did that during the pandemic. It is that the brothers were willing to write off a specific, measurable sum — a 350-person team and roughly ₹60 crore of invested effort — rather than keep feeding a channel that had stopped working, and rebuild around four people and a different distribution logic instead. Killing a large, expensive bet cleanly, and doing it before it kills the company, is the harder and rarer skill; growth capital is comparatively easy to find once a founder has shown they can do that once.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Zoff Foods and when?

Brothers Akash Agrawal and Ashish Agrawal founded Zoff Foods in Raipur in 2018, operating under the registered entity Asquare Foods and Beverages Private Limited.

How much funding has Zoff Foods raised?

Tracxn’s 2026 profile puts cumulative disclosed funding at $7.16 million across five rounds, including ₹1 crore from Aman Gupta on Shark Tank India (February 2023), a ₹40 crore Series A from JM Financial Private Equity (August 2024) and a $2 million pre-Series B, again from JM Financial with Aman Gupta participating (March 2026).

Is Zoff Foods profitable?

No. Zoff reported a ₹20 lakh net loss in FY24 and a wider ₹17 crore net loss in FY25 on revenue of ₹102.7 crore, as total expenses rose 32% to ₹120 crore, per Entrackr, Inc42 and Whalesbook’s March 2026 reporting.

What is Zoff Foods’ latest valuation?

No fully independently confirmed valuation is public for its 2024 or 2026 funding rounds. The only verified figure is the roughly ₹80 crore valuation implied by its February 2023 Shark Tank India deal.

Does Zoff Foods plan to go public?

Co-founder Akash Agrawal has said an IPO is unlikely before 2029-30, framing the next four to five years as a scale-up period investors are underwriting, per BW Businessworld’s reporting.

Sources

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

• Inc42, “D2C Spices Brand Zoff Foods Bags $2 Mn To Expand Omnichannel Sales”, March 2026
• Inc42, “Inside Zoff’s Cookbook: How This Spice Brand Achieved 4X Revenue Growth”
• Inc42, “How ZOFF Grew To ₹102.7 Cr Within Seven Years”, March 2026
• Entrackr, “Zoff Foods raises $2 Mn from JM Financial PE”, March 2026
• Entrackr, “Spice brand Zoff raises Rs 40 Cr in Series A from JM Financial”, August 2024
• Whalesbook, “Zoff Foods Raises $2M as Spice Market Competition and Losses Mount”, March 2026
• JM Financial Limited, press release on its investment in Asquare Foods and Beverages Private Limited (Zoff), August 2024
• Bar and Bench, “ELP advises JM Financial on its investment in Shark Tank fame Zoff Foods”, August 2024
• Entrepreneur India, “ZOFF Raises INR 1 Crore On Shark Tank India’s Season 2”, 2023
• Indian Retailer, “[Funding Alert] ZOFF Bags Rs1 cr from Shark Tank India’s Season 2”, 2023
• businessremedies.com, “The Journey of Zoff Foods’s Founders, Akash and Ashish Agarwal”
• afaqs!, “From ‘Thanda Matlab Cola’ to ‘Khade Masale Matlab Zoff’—this startup wants to own the spice rack”
• Tracxn, ZOFF Foods company and funding profile, 2026
• BW Businessworld, “Zoff Foods Eyes Enhanced Offline Presence, Rs 200 Cr Revenue In FY26, Says Co-founder”
• startupsuccessstories.in, “Akash Agrawalla – Co-Founder of ZOFF Foods”

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