Indian-Origin Woman Shares Journey Of Building $2.8 Million-A-Year Ice Cream Business In US

Pooja Bavishi, an Indian-origin entrepreneur, is winning over Americans with Malai, an ice cream brand that turned into a $2.8 million-a-year wholesale and e-commerce business. The 42-year-old founder and CEO launched Malai in 2015. The business is operated from four brick-and-mortar locations across New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. "Malai is so different because we go beyond chocolate and vanilla," Bavishi told CNBC Make It. "We introduce flavours like cardamom, rose, saffron, [and] nutmeg into ice cream - flavours that are so ubiquitous to so many people around the country and the world that we want to mainstream into American flavours."

The media outlet reviewed documents and found that the company brought in $2.8 million in total sales in 2025. The business was profitable in 2024 and 2025.

Bavishi has earned a degree in urban planning from The London School of Economics. Before this, she worked as a civil rights project coordinator for the Equal Rights Center, a Washington DC-based nonprofit.

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Idea about the business

All of this started when she was hosting some friends and made a homemade ice cream. Her experiment - ginger-star anise ice cream - was an instant hit at a dinner party. "I just remember my friends being like... 'We've never had anything like this before,'" Bavishi said as quoted. Today, Malai generates $2.8 million in annual revenue. 

"I needed to make sure that there was a market for my products and that my idea actually made sense," says Bavishi.

"I would test different [flavours]. I needed to know exactly who my customer was, what they were looking to buy, what their buying behaviour is and who I'm catering to. If I didn't have that information, I had no viable business."

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She gained media attention after her work was praised by a food writer for The New York Times, who was also her customer.

After that, her only focus was to expand the business rather than profits. In order to launch pop-ups and temporary food hall locations around New York, she used "a very small amount" of funding from a "friends and family" investment round in 2017.

"Indian flavours are not experimental," says Bavishi. "These flavours have been enjoyed by billions of people all over the world on a daily basis [and] for generations ... So, the fact that we're introducing it to the mainstream American market, and the fact that we're a leader in that, actually makes me so proud."