Manam Chocolate is a Hyderabad craft chocolate brand building a premium, farm-linked retail business around Indian cacao. It has raised $9 Mn in Series A funding to scale that bet, with Omnivore leading the round and the Turner Morrison consortium joining in. The problem it’s trying to solve is simple: most chocolate sold in India is still treated like a commodity, not a traceable, origin-led food product worth discovering. Founded in 2021 by Chaitanya Muppala, Manam is using that gap to build a D2C premium chocolate brand with stores, gifting, beverages, desserts, and more than just bars.
What is Manam Chocolate and what does it sell?
Manam Chocolate isn’t just selling chocolate bars. It controls a bigger chunk of the chain than most Indian craft brands do. It sources cacao in Andhra Pradesh, ferments it in Tadikalapudi, makes chocolate in-house, and sells it through its own stores, website, marketplaces, and quick commerce channels. Its operating idea is closer to farm-to-retail than plain bean-to-bar.
That matters because Manam has built the brand around post-harvest control, especially fermentation and drying, which is where a lot of flavor is either created or lost. The company’s product architecture is unusually broad too. It includes single-origin and single-farm tablets, bonbons, palettes, clusters, bark, cacao nibs, drinking chocolate, spreads, cookies, gifting assortments, and workshop-led experiences. The assortment has already crossed 300 offerings across 50 categories.
The customer experience is also very deliberate. At Manam Chocolate Karkhana in Hyderabad, the brand combines a shop and an interactive cacao journey. It also has live chocolate-making, a chocolaterie, a chocolate lab, a classroom, and a café inside a 10,000 sq. ft. space. That’s not a normal confectionery store. It’s retail as education.
And that’s probably the smartest part of the model. Before brands like Manam, a buyer mostly met chocolate in a supermarket aisle or a gifting box. Here, the sale starts with provenance, texture, flavor notes, and even the farmer story behind a bar. TIME’s profile on the company captured that shift neatly by noting that some bars identify the farmer tied to the cacao.
Who founded Manam Chocolate and how did it start?
The founding story
Chaitanya Muppala founded Manam Chocolate in 2021, but the idea goes back further. His interest in the category started in 2018, when customers at Almond House — his family’s premium sweets business in Hyderabad — kept asking for chocolate gifting. That pushed him into studying how industrial chocolate differed from craft chocolate, and then into a deeper question: could Indian cacao be good enough to anchor a premium consumer brand of its own?
He didn’t answer that with a quick SKU launch. He spent years studying cacao in West Godavari, talking to growers, and digging into the technical weak spots in fermentation and drying. That work led to the fermentery setup in Tadikalapudi and to Manam’s larger ambition of turning West Godavari into a recognized fine-flavour cacao origin.
Why Muppala had real market fit
This isn’t a founder who wandered into food because it looked trendy. Muppala had already spent about a decade building consumer food businesses before Manam took shape. He took over Almond House in 2013 when it had roughly 1.5 stores, then helped expand it to 9 city outlets and 4 airport locations by 2021. He studied at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia and later joined the Stanford Seed programme.
Muppala also had a track record of launching adjacent brands, which matters here. Beyond Almond House, he helped create Indulge ice cream, Amande bakery products, Gappe Vappe Chaatwala, and Greater Gud. So Manam doesn’t look like a first experiment. It looks like a founder using prior execution muscle in food retail, gifting, and premium packaging to enter a harder category.
Early traction, rollout, and the new round
Manam opened its flagship experiential center, Manam Chocolate Karkhana, in Hyderabad in 2023. It added a beverage bar in the city in 2025 and, in June 2026, opened its flagship New Delhi store in Saket. Along the supply side, it now works with more than 150 farmers across 3,000 acres in Andhra Pradesh. The business sells through its own channels as well as marketplaces and quick commerce. TIME also named Manam one of the World’s Greatest Places in 2024.
The Series A round brings in $9 Mn, or about ₹86 Cr. Omnivore led the round, with participation from the Turner Morrison consortium. The money will go into expansion, especially new retail spaces in Delhi NCR over the next 12 months.
Who Manam competes with — and how it’s different
Manam is competing on 2 fronts at once. One is the mainstream premium shelf, where buyers can pick up products from players like Lindt, Ferrero, Fabelle, Smoor, or imported European brands. The other is the Indian craft set, where names such as Paul and Mike, Mason & Co, Soklet, Pascati, and others already have credibility with enthusiasts.
Its edge isn’t price. Frankly, it’s unlikely to win there. The real difference is vertical control plus experience-led retail. Many craft brands stop at bean-to-bar. Manam is trying to own fermentation, chocolate making, storytelling, and store theater in one brand. That chain is harder to copy than just launching another artisanal bar line.
Why the Manam Chocolate funding matters
This round matters because Manam’s model is capital-hungry in a very specific way. A brand built on immersive stores, controlled sourcing, and premium merchandising can’t scale like a light-asset snack label. It needs real estate, fit-outs, inventory discipline, trained staff, and brand consistency across every touchpoint.
And Delhi NCR is a serious test market.
If Hyderabad proved Manam could create destination retail, Delhi will show whether that formula travels. The region has dense premium demand, strong corporate gifting behavior, and a much more crowded luxury food scene. If the next 12 months go well, Manam won’t just have more stores. It’ll have evidence that Indian-origin craft chocolate can work outside its home market.
Omnivore’s presence is also telling. Manam sits at the intersection of premium D2C and agrifood value creation because the brand story starts with cacao farming, not just packaging. That makes this more interesting than a normal consumer brand cheque.
Is India’s premium chocolate market big enough for Manam Chocolate?
The short answer is yes, though this won’t be an easy market.
The source article pegs India’s premium chocolate market at $639.7 Mn by 2033, with a 9.4% CAGR from 2026 to 2033. Another 2025 market study puts the segment at $290.5 Mn in 2025 and projects it to reach $481.86 Mn by 2031, growing at 8.8% annually. Different reports use different definitions, but they point the same way: premium chocolate in India is growing faster than old-school mass confectionery assumptions would suggest.
There’s a second tailwind here too. India’s D2C brands are expected to grow cumulative GMV to $310 Bn by 2031 from $65 Bn in 2026, according to the source article. That creates a better environment for premium food brands that want to mix owned retail with online sales, marketplaces, and faster delivery.
Consumer behavior is changing in Manam’s favor too. Premiumization is no longer limited to coffee, skincare, or alcohol. Food gifting, cleaner labels, artisanal formats, and origin-led storytelling now sell — especially in urban India. A 2025 premium chocolate study notes that millennials and Gen Z make up more than 65% of India’s population.
Where does Manam Chocolate go next?
Manam Chocolate now has enough capital to prove whether Indian craft chocolate can become a scaled retail category, not just a niche product for food nerds.
The company has already shown it can build desire around cacao from Andhra Pradesh. Now it has to show repeatability in Delhi NCR, where attention is expensive and novelty fades fast. Watch the store rollout, yes. But also watch whether Manam can keep its farmer-linked origin story intact while it grows.
Read how Rivvun AI raised a $7.5M seed led by Sitara Capital and 3one4 Capital to help enterprises detect and recover revenue and spend leakages by connecting contracts, invoices, and finance systems with AI-driven execution workflows.
FAQ
- What is the Manam Chocolate funding round about? Manam Chocolate raised $9 Mn in a Series A round led by Omnivore, with the Turner Morrison consortium also participating. The money is meant to fund expansion, especially new retail spaces in Delhi NCR over the next 12 months, after the brand’s June 2026 entry into New Delhi.
- How does Manam Chocolate work as a business? It works as a vertically integrated premium chocolate brand rather than just a chocolatier selling bars. Manam sources cacao from Andhra Pradesh, handles fermentation and chocolate making, and then sells through its own website, physical stores, marketplaces, and quick commerce while also using immersive retail formats like its Hyderabad Karkhana.
- Who founded Manam Chocolate? Chaitanya Muppala founded Manam Chocolate in 2021. Before that, he spent years scaling Hyderabad sweets brand Almond House, studied business in Canada at UBC’s Sauder School, and launched other food businesses, which gave him unusually strong operating fit for a premium consumer brand.
- Is Manam Chocolate a D2C brand or a premium chocolate retailer? It’s both, really. Manam is a D2C premium craft chocolate brand, but it’s also building experience-led retail through formats like its Hyderabad flagship and its Saket store in New Delhi, which makes it broader than a typical online-first chocolate label.
