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In India, biryani is more than just food; its reach spans the length and breadth of the country, uniting foodies from across the country with its carefully crafted blend of spices, rice, vegetables and choice of meat—all of which vary from region to region. According to Swiggy data, India ordered 2.5 biryanis per second in 2023.

In a crowded market where cloud kitchens including BiryaniByKilo, Behrouz Biryani, and EatFit are one-upping each other on foodtech platforms, Potful is trying to distinguish itself. The Bengaluru-based cloud kitchen specialises in handi biryani, which is cooked in the traditional way in ‘handis’, or clay pots, where the heat transfer is slow and uniform and the biryani takes longer to cook.

“This also keeps the aroma and flavour intact,” Lokesh Krishnan, Founder, Potful tells YourStory.

Operating 25 cloud kitchens across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai, Potful claims to be the largest handi biryani brand and the second-largest cloud kitchen brand in south India. It also makes its offerings diverse with Hyderabadi Biryani, Kolkata Biryani, Lucknowi Biryani, and Bengaluru Donne Biryani.

Potful is now eyeing to put its head above the rest in the crowded cloud kitchen field.

Beyond biryani

When starting up in 2017, Krishnan, who earlier worked with Amul and Metro Cash & Carry, chose to focus on cloud kitchens instead of dining out.

“Close to 60% of biryani consumed was delivered [via cloud kitchens]. Hence, I opted for the cloud kitchen route… since people are ordering in instead of dining out. And instead of losing focus and trying to sell everything, we wanted to focus and be a biryani company,” Krishnan says.

The cloud kitchen segment has gained significant traction in India, with the market size touching $969.5 million in 2023, according to a report by IMARC Group, and projected to reach $2.9 billion by 2032. This trend can be attributed to increased ecommerce post-pandemic and the evolving consumer preference of ordering food from the comfort of their homes.

While Potful started with biryani, kebab, and curries, it experimented with additional seasonal items on the menu such as Navarathna special fasting menu during Navratri, haleem, Iftar box and Rooh Afza drinks during the 30-day Ramadan period. It currently has a total of 107 items and combos on its menu.

Beyond running a cloud kitchen, the company also provides livelihood to over 100 potters from Chinnandahalli a village near Hoskote, Karnataka. “Earlier, they used to make chai kulhads, planters, and water storage pots before we approached them. And starting with one, we now have 100 people on board,” says Krishnan.

The company has also invested more than Rs 50 lakh in mechanising pottery. “We have given machines to each potter to make the handis,” which has resulted in the production quadrupling at half the time and effort, he adds.

The cloud kitchen also strives to be sustainable. It sends coriander seeds with each order and encourages customers to plant them in the very same pots.

Business and operations

Potful nearly doubled its revenue over the last two years, earning Rs 70 crore in FY24 from approximately Rs 38 crore in the previous fiscal year—without increasing the number of cloud kitchens or any geographic expansion. In each city, it has a warehouse, a central kitchen, and a cloud kitchen.

The company receives more than one lakh orders a month. Each order is freshly prepared, which leads to a longer delivery time of approximately 60-70 minutes as the cloud kitchen doesn’t reheat biryanis.

Poutful sources the spices used from the plantations in Kerala; the chicken, other proteins and vegetables are sourced locally; and the masala is centralised and made in-house. The company uses Daawat rice. “People order Biryani for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it’s a $4-billion category and we want to build India’s most loved biryani brand,” says the founder.

The company offers its services on Swiggy and Zomato which account for 90% of the sales. It also sells through its app, website, and WhatsApp. The most sold item of the company on the foodtech apps is the Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani.

However, the journey wasn’t without its share of challenges. In the beginning, the seven-member team, which has now grown to have 380 employees, found it difficult to break through as Potful wasn’t a restaurant brand. The company saw a “complete organic growth, without any advertisements or burning cash,” the founder remarks.

“I put in all of mine and my wife’s money for the first two years, however, things eased a little once we received their first seed round,” he recalls. The company raised Rs 17 crore in seed funding over multiple rounds between 2019 and 2023 from Norway-based investor Orkla Foods.

From a revenue of Rs 5 crore in 2019, Potful reached Rs 70 crore in FY24, attained PAT profitability in June 2024 and became EBITDA positive in the previous quarter.

Funding and future

Potful projects a revenue of Rs 100 crore for FY25 and plans to raise Rs 50 crore thereafter for “expansion to the south and western regions of India,” says Krishnan without specifying the exact locations.

“As a cloud kitchen, brand visibility and high dependency on the aggregators is the biggest challenge compared to offline restaurants. Hence, we are looking at an offline,” Krishnan notes. The company plans to set up restaurants, beginning with Bengaluru, and then to Hyderabad and Chennai.

The company aims to be a thousand-crore brand by 2030.