Sold house after restaurant business failed, built Rs 1,000 crore ‘Veeba’: How Viraj Bahl turned…

Fresh updates from the financial markets indicate that Viraj Bahl's journey in India's fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry has been anything but linear. The entrepreneur behind Veeba Foods had already experienced both a successful family-business exit and a painful entrepreneurial setback before building the sauces and condiments firm into a business with more than Rs 1,000 crore in annual topline.

Bahl's connection with the food business began early. As a child, he frequently visited his father Rajiv Bahl’s factory and later worked at the family’s Fun Foods stall at Aahar, Delhi. He wanted to join the family business, but his father had a condition: Bahl would have to first prove that he could earn enough to backing a family in the same standard of living in which he had grown up.

"Feel free to join when you start earning Rs 3 lakh per month," his father told him, according to an interview with Forbes India.

Bahl took up the challenge. He studied marine engineering at Singapore Polytechnic and joined a Singapore-based merchant navy firm. While working on ferries, tankers and containers, he continued his education through correspondence courses and funded his studies himself.

By 2002, he was earning Rs 3 lakh a month, helped by firm performance and early promotions. At 22, he finally joined Fun Foods, the family business founded by Rajiv and Vibha Bahl in 1983.

The firm manufactured and marketed processed food products, including mayonnaise, pizza toppings, oriental salads and spices. Over the next few years, the business grew rapidly.

Then came an offer that changed the family’s fortunes.

In 2008, German packaged-food firm Dr Oetker agreed to acquire Fun Foods for Rs 110 crore. The firm, which had started with the Bahl couple’s Rs 28 crore investment, had generated a substantial return.

Bahl, that stated, was reluctant to sell. The deal eventually went through, giving the family capital and Bahl a new chapter in his entrepreneurial journey.

After the Fun Foods exit, Bahl moved into the restaurant business, rolling out Pocket Full. But the venture did not work out as scheduled.

By 2013, after more than four years of struggling with the business, Bahl had shut all six outlets.

“It was a wonderful brand and concept,” Bahl recalled in his conversation with Forbes India.

The failure proved to be a significant setback. But it additionally pushed Bahl back towards the food category he knew best.

He eventually sold his house to backing the business, according to accounts of his entrepreneurial journey, before starting what would become his biggest venture.

Bahl founded Veeba in 2013 in Gurugram with Shilpa Madan. The firm initially focused on sauces, dips and condiments, supplying both retail consumers and institutional customers such as restaurants and coffee chains.

Unlike the restaurant venture, Veeba was built around Bahl’s experience in food manufacturing and his understanding of the institutional market.

The firm attracted market participants as it expanded. According to financial data available on Tracxn, between December 2012 and November 2019, Veeba boosted around $58.2 million through nine equity rounds, with market participants including DSG Consumer Partners, Saama Capital, Verlinvest and Sixth Sense Ventures.

Its disclosed post-money valuation rose from around $2.6 million at the seed stage in 2012 to around $261 million in its November 2019 Series D round.

But the bigger transformation came from the business itself.

According to standalone filings for Vrb Consumer Products Pvt Ltd, Veeba’s topline rose from Rs 5.41 crore in FY14 to Rs 1,051.60 crore in FY26, as per Tracxn data.

Topline touched Rs 553 crore in FY22 and Rs 821 crore in FY23 before crossing the Rs 1,000-crore mark. The firm’s latest noted topline expansion was 15% year on year, while its five-year topline CAGR stood at 26%.

Veeba’s expansion was not immediately accompanied by earnings. As the firm invested in scaling its brand and operations, losses widened, reaching around Rs 72 crore in FY20.

The financial picture subsequently changed. The firm was close to break-even in FY23, reporting a loss of just Rs 0.13 crore.

It posted its first clear earnings in FY24, with a net earnings of Rs 28.80 crore. Earnings remained positive at Rs 9.95 crore in FY25 and Rs 11.47 crore in FY26.

The firm’s workforce has additionally expanded. Labour filings put headcount at 1,232 as of August 31, 2025, up around 8% from a year earlier.

From a failed restaurant venture and the decision to put personal assets behind his next business, Bahl’s journey with Veeba has ultimately been around returning to the food industry he knew from the beginning, but building it on a much larger scale.