Delhi-based clean-label frozen food brand Protein Pantry has raised Rs 9 crore (about $1 million) in a seed round led by Sharrp Ventures, the Mumbai family office known for backing consumer brands.
The round, reported by Entrackr, also drew Peercheque, Consumer Collective by Atrium and Indian Silicon Valley Capital, plus an angel list stacked with consumer-brand operators — including Mamaearth co-founder Varun Alagh, Rishubh Satiya, Avnish Anand, Arush Chopra, Saurabh Munjal and Signal Ventures.
Founded in November 2025 by Disha Bhattacharya and Prashanth Bhushan, Protein Pantry makes ready-to-cook, high-protein frozen items — soya chaap, kebabs, cutlets and falafels — with a deliberately austere ingredient philosophy: no refined flour, no preservatives, no palm oil, and everything baked rather than fried. The brand says it now serves more than 30,000 households with a strong repeat rate, selling direct-to-consumer and through quick-commerce platforms including Blinkit, FirstClub and Flipkart Minutes across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Jaipur.
The fresh capital goes primarily toward setting up and scaling the company's own manufacturing unit, with continued spend on R&D and the supply chain. For a frozen brand, owning the plant is the real moat: preservative-free frozen food fails fast on inconsistency and short shelf life, and co-manufacturing caps both quality control and unit economics.
Why it matters for founders
A $1 million seed into a year-old food brand tells you what consumer investors are buying in 2026: a legible clean-label story, real quick-commerce distribution from day one, and a founder team willing to put manufacturing on the balance sheet early. If you sell on someone else's line, raise enough to own your plant before the category gets crowded.