India’s beverage market has long been dominated by giants like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and now Reliance’s Campa, making it difficult for new brands to scale, but Lahori Jeera has disrupted the segment by crossing Rs 500 crore in revenue in the fiscal year ended March 2025 and steadily capturing market share in the fizzy drinks category.
On a year-on-year basis, Lahori’s revenue from operations grew 73% to Rs 540 crore in FY25 from Rs 312 crore in FY24, its consolidated financial statements accessed from the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show.
The company generates the majority of its revenue from beverage sales, including Lahori Jeera, Lahori Nimboo, and Lahori Shikanj, with a minor contribution from scrap sales and other non-operating income such as interest on fixed deposits, its total revenue stood at Rs 543 crore in the last fiscal.
For the beverage manufacturer, procurement stood as the largest cost centre, accounted for 63% of total expenses, and rose over 70% to Rs 316 crore in FY25 from Rs 184 crore in FY24, driven by increased scale of operations.
Employee benefit expenses rose 49% year-on-year to Rs 40 crore in FY25 from Rs 27 crore in FY24, while contractual employee costs increased to Rs 23 crore from Rs 12 crore.
Transportation cost for the firm more than doubled in the last fiscal year to Rs 52 crore, which accounted for over 10% of the firm’s overall expenditure. Expenses related to rent, advertisements, legal fees, and other overheads led to a nearly 80% rise in total expenditure, which grew from Rs 278 crore in FY24 to Rs 499 crore in FY25.
After tripling its profit in FY24, the Rupnagar, Punjab-based company maintained its profit at Rs 25 crore in the previous fiscal, as both revenue and expenses grew at a similar pace.
The company spent Rs 0.9 to earn a rupee during the year, while its ROCE and EBITDA margins declined marginally to 14% and 10%, respectively. By the end of FY25, total current assets stood at Rs 117 crore, including Rs 50 crore in cash and bank balances.
Lahori Jeera has raised around $46 million across three funding rounds so far, including Rs 200 crore (approximately $23 million) from Motilal Oswal in May last year, which valued the company at around Rs 2,800 crore or $329 million post-allotment.
Following the latest fundraise, Motilal Oswal acquired a 7.14% stake in the company, while existing investor Verlinvest holds 19.64%, and the founder’s stake reduced from 76.21% to 70.76%.
With one of the few truly breakthrough campaigns that the category was known for until recently, Lahori Zeera has emerged as a dash of freshness in an otherwise mature category that was seasonal, slow growing, and stuck with entrenched players. Even its growth over the past two years has seemed unexpected, with the firm taking its own time to acknowledge and plan bigger. So there is everything to like about the upstart firm from Punjab. However, it will continue to face serious challenges, especially on expanding distribution, as that remains the decisive factor for the category.
For now, the firm seems to be content with sacrificing margins to ensure offtake, with even many retailers looking to sell full cases at a discount from what we have seen. That is a clear sign of the pressure to cycle revenues fast due to lower margins.
One also wonders if any brand can capture the kind of loyalty the category used to have earlier, though Lahori does offer ‘healthier’ options in perception with the low serving sizes and use of traditional names and add ons like zeera or Nimboo, Shikanji etc. Going pan India will require a hard, expensive grind, depending on how quickly it wants to get there, with 2-3 years probably the fastest possible. Any faster, and the firm will face possibly unacceptable losses in the present environment. Much like the innovative lengths to which customers in its ads go to make it convenient to drink Lahori, the firm needs to continue to think outside the box.
