How Sleepy Owl Is Building India’s At-Home Coffee Culture
Sleepy Owl is a New Delhi-based at-home coffee brand that set out to make quality coffee a home ritual rather than an out-of-home occasion, without the need for expensive equipment or complicated brewing processes.
Sector
BeveragesLocation
New DelhiInvestment Year
2020Investment Status
Active
Brand Story
Sleepy Owl started with India’s first FSSAI-certified cold brew and has since grown into a full range of at-home coffee formats, crossing INR 100 Cr in annual revenue, profitably. The brand sources single-origin Arabica beans directly from Grade A plantations in Chikmagalur and is available across 15,000 retail stores, major quick commerce platforms, and its own D2C website.
Origin
Ajai Thandi, Arman Sood, and Ashwajeet Singh, three friends united by a shared frustration with India’s coffee market, founded Sleepy Owl in 2016. Quality coffee was either too expensive or too complicated to make at home, and the available instant options offered little variety. They saw a gap and decided to fill it, leaving their corporate jobs to launch Sleepy Owl with a ready-to-drink Cold Brew Box designed for home consumption.
Building the brand meant solving two problems at once. Sourcing required convincing farmers in Chikmagalur to sell premium single-origin Arabica beans in small quantities, at a time when large companies dominated bulk purchases. On the consumer side, cold brew was an unfamiliar concept in India, so the founders went door-to-door, sampled at food events, and built their first thousand customers one conversation at a time.
How we helped
Rukam Capital first backed Sleepy Owl in 2020 and went on to lead the brand’s fundraise. The coffee startup has raised $8 Mn from Rukam Capital and DSG Consumer Partners. The capital was directed toward strengthening the core team, building a pan-India distribution network, and expanding the product range. Rukam has remained closely involved with the founding team throughout the business’s evolution, offering strategic guidance alongside capital.
When we first backed Sleepy Owl, what stood out was the consistency the brand had demonstrated since 2016, through a pandemic and a market dominated by legacy players. The founders came with complementary skills and a clear sense of where they were headed, right from the start. Many founders set out to build consumer brands, but very few build ones that last. Sleepy Owl is one of them. Coffee is a competitive category. It requires constant innovation and regular course corrections. The team's understanding of brand building and product development is what makes that relationship genuinely useful.
Interested to know more about the brand?
View Portfolio
Pitch To Us
Got a bold idea you believe in?
We’d love to hear more. Share a bit about yourself, a quick overview of your vision, the problem you’re solving, and the kind of support you’re looking for.