Mumbai-based quick-service restaurant chain Benne has raised Rs 35 crore (around $3.70 million) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Ranjan Pai's family office, Claypond Capital, valuing the two-year-old dosa brand at approximately Rs 364 crore on a post-money basis. The company's board has approved the issue of 1,799 compulsorily convertible preference shares at Rs 20,349 apiece to complete the raise, according to a regulatory filing accessed by Entrackr.
Claypond Capital contributed the bulk of the round with Rs 28.75 crore, followed by AL Trusts with Rs 3.5 crore and public investor Mukul Agrawal with Rs 1.75 crore. Smaller cheques of Rs 75 lakh and Rs 25 lakh came from Madhukeshwar Desai and Cortado Advisory Services respectively. Following the allotment, Claypond Capital Partners becomes Benne's largest external shareholder with an 8.21% stake, ahead of early backer Infinyte Club at 9%.
Benne was founded by husband-and-wife duo Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan, who opened their first outlet in Mumbai's Bandra neighbourhood in May 2024. Neither had a background in the restaurant business: Iyer previously worked as an actor, with credits including the film Lekar Hum Deewana Dil and the Amazon Prime series The Forgotten Army, while Narayan trained as a psychologist. The brand centres on authentic Davangere-style benne dosa — a Karnataka speciality made with generous amounts of butter — served through a deliberately narrow menu and compact outlet format designed to keep kitchen operations simple and consistent.
The tiny Bandra outlet built an early following partly through social media, with the founders documenting both the setbacks and eventual success of opening the cafe well before its doors opened. That online following soon translated into offline footfall, and the outlet became a magnet for Bollywood regulars, reportedly including Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Virat Kohli, Shraddha Kapoor and Masaba Gupta. For Claypond Capital — known for backing companies such as Akasa Air and Zepto — the investment marks its first foray into the food and beverage sector.
The fresh funding will support Benne's expansion beyond its current handful of outlets as it looks to scale its narrow-menu model across additional cities. The round reflects a broader pattern in India's food-services market, where investors are increasingly backing sharply focused, single-category restaurant concepts — often built on strong social media traction and founder storytelling — over broader multi-cuisine chains, betting that operational simplicity and brand intensity can scale as effectively as menu breadth once did.
