Like many, I took to baking bread during the pandemic. But on days I ran out of yeast, I reached for a sourdough loaf from The Baker’s Dozen. It was a conscious choice for what felt like a healthier alternative to regular bread.
It was this accessibility that turned sourdough, long perceived as premium and out of reach for the average Indian, into a staple. Aditi Handa, the co-founder of The Baker’s Dozen, attributes this shift to two parallel factors—social media turned sourdough into a viral sensation, and the rise of quick commerce made it possible for consumers to get a loaf delivered in minutes. “People also didn’t have to be educated anymore because they got smarter than us, thanks to Instagram,” says Handa, 41, over a Zoom call from her office in Ahmedabad.
The Baker’s Dozen is one of the earliest brands to champion clean-label, artisanal bread and bakery products in the country. Founded in Mumbai by Handa along with her partner Sneh Jain in 2013, it promised natural fermentation processes without any preservatives. With the pandemic, the philosophy became even more relevant. If refined flour and palm oil were the villains of the food universe, it managed to stay ahead of the game, while being accessible on quick com and price wise in an increasingly competitive market.
The company’s revenue has grown from ₹45 crore in FY24 to ₹80 crore in FY25 and is expected to be ₹140 crore in FY26 with breads and cakes being the major growth drivers. Currently, it produces 3.5-4 million units (across all categories) per month, with products, ranging from cakes, cookies and chips to sourdough bread, priced from ₹35-215.
But bread was not part of the plan.
In fact, Handa initially had no formal training in baking or culinary arts. Born into a family of entrepreneurs in Ahmedabad, she graduated in psychology at UK’s Nottingham University in 2007 and followed it with a master’s degree in human resources development from De Montfort University in Leicester. She moved back to India in 2009 and around the same time met Jain (now her husband). “For us, love at first sight was all about discussing business ideas,” she says in jest. While she takes care of product innovation and R&D, Jain looks after business strategy and operations.
Handa’s first venture was a souvenir shop on the IIM Ahmedabad campus, which she ran for about two years before handing it over to the institute in 2011. Marriage followed and the couple relocated to Canada, where Jain worked with McKinsey & Co. as a consultant. They decided to move back to India the next year. Soon they chalked out a business plan, starting with identifying the industry. “We even met plastic box manufacturers to understand their business model, and to study if there was a gap in the market that we could fill.”
Handa and Jain interacted with over 40-50 professionals across industries, and realised there was a clear gap in the market for good quality bread. “That’s when we thought why not start a bakery.” However, neither of them had the expertise or understanding of the nuances of making bread. “But having grown up in a business family, what came naturally to me was the instinct to focus on a world-class product. I knew everything else from brand building to scaling and numbers would follow,” she says.
Now the only way to build a good product was to master the craft behind it. In 2012, Handa enrolled in a baking course at New York’s International Culinary Center. “It opened my eyes. I realised we weren’t making bread the way it is meant to be made. We were only using shortcuts, like adding emulsifiers and all sorts of additives that we didn’t need to.”
What further piqued her interest was the very science behind sourdough. When she returned home after completing her course, she started perfecting the recipe. “But I was doing something terribly wrong.” It was only when she reached out to her chefs at culinary school that she realised she hadn’t accounted for the differences in flour, water and most importantly, the local weather. “When I finally cracked the recipe, my mother said, Aditi, this might work in France as people are used to eating maida (refined flour) there, but in India, we traditionally eat atta (wheat flour). It made sense. It also meant reworking our maida to atta ratios, but we managed to go 100% whole wheat in the next five years.”
The Baker’s Dozen began with breads, primarily sourdough, before gradually expanding its portfolio to add cakes, cookies, crackers and more recently, protein chips. Technique became the anchor of the business, and sourdough tied every product across the category—from sourdough pita and burger buns to pizza base and pav.
It opened its first flagship store in the year of its launch in Mumbai’s Kemps Corner. Over the next decade, the brand had expanded to 15 stand-alone stores; however they shut all of them down between 2023-24 as the company shifted to omnichannel distribution. The products moved to quick commerce sites, and offline multi-brand retail stores such as Nature’s Basket, DMart and Reliance Retail. Today, almost 90% of the company’s revenue comes from quick commerce in more than 350 cities.
India’s bread landscape has since then undergone a huge transformation. The average consumer is spoiled for choice. The bread aisle at your neighbourhood supermarket is lined with a zillion brands screaming “no-maida”, “100% atta”, “gluten-free” and sourdough made with “no added yeast”. The competition is evident, but does the market seem saturated? “I don’t think so. I just feel more and more people now understand the goodness of sourdough and are willing to make the shift. The demand is more and therefore there are newer players,” she adds.
According to a report by market research company IMARC Group, the country’s bread market size reached $492 million in 2025, and is expected to reach $1,037 million by 2034, exhibiting a growth rate (CAGR) of 8.39% during 2026-34. A growing demand for convenience foods, and an increasing appetite for healthier variants, aided by e-commerce channels and modern innovations in terms of ingredients and baking techniques have all contributed to this growth.
In 2019, The Baker’s Dozen shifted its base to Ahmedabad to meet the growing demand and expand its production capacity. This enabled them to set up a 25,000 sq. ft baking facility designed to meet the highest standards of hygiene and food safety. It also introduced hygienic airtight packaging, preservative-free baking, and 100% whole wheat products.
By 2022, the company secured $5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Fireside Ventures, with a mix of debt and equity. The investment was used to strengthen R&D, expand distribution, enhance technology, increase manufacturing capacity, and build the brand. Two years later, it raised an additional ₹33 crore in a funding round led by Wipro Consumer Care Ventures, with participation from Fireside Ventures, Mirabilis Investment Trust, She Capital, and Neo Foods.
The next phase, around 2018, involved cakes. “If you had to make a cake at home, what would you do? We asked ourselves if we could do the same thing at a commercial level. Because the reality is, even if you want to have a homemade cake or a cookie or even bread for that matter, you’re most likely not going to put in the effort. It’s a tedious task. We thought let us do that for you,” she says. Flavour was key and there was no room for compromise. “We decided we will not add essence. If it’s a chocolate cake, we will use real chocolate or cocoa powder. If it’s a banana cake, we will add fresh banana puree.”
Armed with a fresh patisserie degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 2015, she wanted to steer clear of elaborate party cakes. “There were enough of them already. I wanted to make sponge cakes and that too for daily consumption. We called it guilt-free indulgence instead, and identified the nasties and removed them…the maida, the palm oil.” The refined flour was replaced with whole wheat flour and palm oil with sunflower oil. The brand now has a range of cakes, from vanilla and carrot to walnut, chocolate and orange.
But the journey came with several challenges. In 2024, while running trials for doughnuts, Handa found out the chocolate filling contained palm oil. “It had taken us nine months to develop the product. We knew we couldn’t have these caveats because we wanted to claim it is a zero maida, zero palm oil product. At the same time, we didn’t want our customers to read some thesis on the labels,” she says. It meant going back to the manufacturer and insisting that he make the chocolate filling without palm oil.
Consumer education remains a recurring concern for the brand especially when people mistake naturally fermented bread for stale bread. “We bake our sourdough bread on a deck oven, which means there will be some whitish flour dust on it. Now some think this is fungus, and I totally understand where they are coming from.”
The Baker’s Dozen now plans to focus on its sub- ₹50 one-bite portion size category, which includes doughnuts, muffins and love cakes (a heart-shaped mini cake). “Everyone loves a treat, something they can eat on the go or indulge in by themselves,” she says. With an eye on the healthy snacking market, the brand this year launched baked multigrain protein chips made with urad dal, jowar and chickpeas.
I think of my own bread experiments, and while nothing beats the joy of making a loaf from scratch, convenience and accessibility are what brands like The Baker’s Dozen offer. Curious to know how Handa likes her bread, I ask her if she has a favourite combination: “Oh simple, just butter.”