ISN Exclusive: Hyderabad’s popular brand Manam Chocolate in talks to raise maiden VC funding round

As more consumers crave sweets and satiate their sweet tooth, more businesses, building in the space, are mushrooming. And venture capital interest in piquing, too.

Manam Chocolate, a Hyderabad-based extremely popular chocolate brand, is in the advanced stages of raising its maiden funding round from Omnivore VC, sources with confidential information told IndianStartupNews (ISN). 

“The round should not exceed $5-10 million as per current deal negotiations but could be larger if the two sides agree there is more capital needed to hyperscale the business and take operations to several other regions,” ISN has learnt from a source. 

Manam – meaning ‘We’ or ‘Us’ in Telugu – was founded in 2023 and has a great recall among consumers. It owns the full stack from growing its own cacao to retail stores.

“The chocolate most of us have grown up on is made by big industrial brands who, sadly, sacrifice the soul of chocolate for the sake of standardisation,” the brand says on its website establishing what differentiates it from the rest of the chocolates. 

Manam and Omnivore did not reply to ISN. 

The craft chocolate movement in India is still at a nascent stage and is primarily driven by small-batch ‘bean-to-bar’ makers. Since these chocolate makers start with the bean and not the fruit, they are unable to develop the true flavour potential of cacao, the brand, on its website, explaining its moat said. It also likely indicates what the funding will be used for apart from general expansion.