Sion East in Mumbai is an old-school, green, self-contained neighbourhood, and home to the headquarters of Kavv Foods Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of NOTO ice cream, founded by Varun Sheth and Ashni Shah. A large, creaky elevator deposits me in the lobby of their modern office, housed in Champaklal Industrial Estate, a 1970s-style corporate building with a weathered concrete facade. Shah, clad in a kitschy white shirt, guides me into Sheth’s cabin. He’s dressed in a utilitarian black T-shirt.
Launched in 2019, NOTO is in the niche space of homegrown, low-sugar ice creams and is available across quick-commerce platforms in Mumbai, Pune, the National Capital Region (NCR), Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Low-sugar and low-calorie ice creams are an emerging market in India, and NOTO’s competitors include Getaway and Go Zero.
According to market research firm IMARC, India’s ice-cream industry is predicted to reach ₹639.41 billion by 2034, with demand for vegan, plant-based, and functional health options. Leaning into this opportunity, NOTO offers popsicles, cups, tacos, and minis or one-bite ice creams, which are among their most popular items. Fruit-based treats that induce nostalgia like guava and jamun popsicles are core to their portfolio. The average price for one serving is ₹90-100.
In one corner of Sheth’s cabin is a small fridge from which he offers me a selection of their ice creams. I pick their newest launch, a vegan chocobar that is yet to hit the shelves, and we get talking.
Sheth, 41, and Shah, 37, hail from Gujarati business families, and contrary to family tradition, both refused to join their fathers’ ventures.
“In that sense, we have a rebel streak. We wanted to build something on our own. In fact, I am like a black sheep in my family,” Sheth jokes. In his late teens, he was a professional gamer and his mother wanted to pack up his desktop for good. He was not academically inclined, but had a penchant for competitive sports and a passion for food.
“Varun gets his love for food from his grandmother, who enjoys feeding people and has quite an adventurous palate,” Shah shares. Gaming didn’t have a clearly defined career path, so he completed an undergraduate course in business from Jain College in Bengaluru.
Thereafter, at the behest of his parents, he moved to New York to join his uncle’s diamond business. It was the late aughts and New York was at the forefront of dining trends. Sheth’s curiosity for the culinary arts led him to pursue a diploma at the Natural Gourmet Institute.
“It was 2010, and they were ahead of their time. They focused on organic produce, whole foods, clean ingredients, and sugar substitutes,” he says. His education was in a niche culinary space with an emphasis on health-supportive cuisine.
On returning to India a year later, Sheth worked at the Taj in Mumbai for a few months, but being an entrepreneur was always on the cards. In 2012, he launched the food company 1Tablespoon with a pizza brand and catering arm.
He met Shah through a doctor whose party he catered for. During their initial meetings, they discovered that both went to the same school (Bombay Scottish), lived a few minutes away from each other, and had common friends. It was early 2015, and they tied the knot later that year.
Like Sheth, Shah was a budding entrepreneur. After a diploma in fashion design from Istituto Marangoni Milan, she was running an accessories brand, MERAKI by Ashni Shah, selling statement earrings, cuffs and neckpieces. While participating in fashion exhibitions across the city, she noticed a gap for good, fuss-free food at those events.
She encouraged Sheth to start selling pizzas at such events, which helped him grow his business. About two years after the wedding, she shut down MERAKI and joined Sheth. “I was getting really bored sitting by myself in the house and designing things. Those exhibitions were the only motivation, but they were few and far between. So I started helping him set up his pizza kitchen and established four outlets in Mumbai,” she says.
Delivering pizzas proved to be a challenge because his speciality was thin crust, which would get soggy. At the same time, catering involved intense coordination and late hours, disrupting their work-life balance. The couple started exploring food businesses that could be distribution-led.
They were also on a health journey and decided to eat better when they came across low-sugar ice creams. Sheth says, “It goes back to my uncle in New York. His son introduced me to the low-sugar American ice-cream brand Halo Top. Ashni and I have a super sweet tooth and at that time we were on a health trajectory. We were also searching for business opportunities that aligned with our health-oriented approach.”
They saw an opportunity in a differentiated product category. As Sheth puts it, “Solving for indulgence without the guilt attached to it is what we’re trying to do.”
The couple invested close to ₹1 crore as initial capital. Sheth experimented with recipes by working with a food technologist in Mumbai and a food consultant from the UK . Shah got involved in brand building and marketing.
When NOTO launched in May 2019, they had a three-pronged approach to spread the word—gifting to close friends and family, hiring an agency for influencer marketing, and setting up kiosks at small events, including corporate offices, to give tasters to guests. They ran ads on Zomato and Swiggy, and were available at the now shuttered gourmet grocery store Foodhall in Mumbai. As NOTO took off, Sheth closed down 1Tablespoon in 2024.
In those early years, work became inseparable from their personal life, so they decided to separate the two. “We wouldn’t talk about work unless it was an absolute SOS while we were at home at the end of the day. It is an interesting dynamic and there have been times when there were differences of opinion, friction, and animated conversations,” says Sheth.
Over time, they also learnt each other’s strong points. “In a business like ours, we trust the other partner blindly; it’s always good to bounce anything and everything off them to get the most unbiased feedback,” he adds.
Their taste in ice cream flavours reflects their different preferences: Shah swears by salted caramel and choco taco, while Sheth’s experimental palate will enjoy a matcha ice cream as much as a raspberry.
Their approach to offering “better-for-you ice creams” means ensuring the ice creams do not “taste like a compromise” just because they are low calorie or low sugar.
“Taste is one of our strongest pillars. If we have a 50-calorie popsicle, we could have easily reduced it to 25 or 30 calories by putting in only flavour and removing fruit. But that would not have given you the same feeling of eating a fruit popsicle and enjoying the real flavour,” says Shah.
The covid-induced lockdown worked in their favour as people looked for healthier alternatives. The lockdown period also changed their distribution plans, and they pivoted to quick-commerce apps like Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart. The growth of quick commerce improved the cold chain infrastructure to a large extent and allowed NOTO to expand without the hassles of modern trade that involves supermarkets and multi-chain retailers.
NOTO started selling in Pune in 2020, Bengaluru and NCR in 2021, followed by Hyderabad and Chennai in 2023. Their product portfolio over the years has grown from ice-cream cups and fruit pops to vegan products, ice-cream cake and bars. The expansion was driven by five rounds of fund-raising.
In the initial round in 2021, around ₹4 crore was invested by a group of investors, including actor John Abraham; this was followed by more than ₹19 crore from White Whale Ventures and Nikhil Kamath-backed Rainmatter; and last year, they brought in ₹15 crore through Inflection Point Ventures (IPV).
“For a startup, raising funds is just one part of the story; an exit is far more important,” says Sheth. NOTO broke even in March and has made monthly profits since. Their annual revenue has grown from ₹20 crore in FY24 to ₹35 crore in FY26, and their valuation was ₹85 crore in the last financial year.
At the same time, products using artificial sweeteners have come under scrutiny. Research indicates sweeteners like aspartame are potentially carcinogenic.
“When we launched the brand in 2019, we made a conscious decision to stay away from a few of the really high-potency, ultra-processed sweeteners like aspartame, acesulfame and sucralose. It’s because parents prefer not to give foods with these ingredients to their children, and expecting mothers avoid them,” says Sheth; he and Shah are parents to a toddler.
Their products contain polyols, or sugar alcohols, like maltitol. These have become popular for their low calorie count, but they can cause bloating. Shah weighs in: “The dosage is important. One serving of ice cream has about 4-5g of polyol, which is minimal, but binge eating is not advised. As with most things in life, moderation is key.”
The brand aims to increase its footprint by expanding to tier-2 cities. They are also planning to introduce new products like a sandwich ice cream. Is there an ice cream parlour in the making? Sheth says, “Although there are no immediate plans, with the right partner or investment in place, omnichannel is the ultimate goal.”