A homemade batch of ginger and star anise ice cream at a dinner party changed the course of Pooja Bavishi’s career. What started as a kitchen experiment during her MBA studies later grew into Malai, a fast-growing ice cream brand known for bringing Indian spices and flavours into the American dessert market.
The Brooklyn-based company earned $2.8 million in sales in 2025 and remained profitable for the second straight year, reported CNBC. Malai now operates four stores across New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Its latest outlet opened in Manhattan’s West Village on Saturday.
Bavishi, 42, built the company around flavours she grew up eating at home after her parents immigrated to the United States from India. Instead of sticking to traditional chocolate and vanilla, Malai sells ice creams flavored with cardamom, saffron, rose, nutmeg and ginger, reported CNBC.
“Malai is so different because we go beyond chocolate and vanilla,” Bavishi said. “We introduce flavours like cardamom, rose, saffron and nutmeg into ice cream,” she told CNBC.
Before starting the company, Bavishi studied urban planning at London School of Economics and later worked at the Equal Rights Center as a civil rights project coordinator. The idea for Malai came during her MBA studies at New York University in 2014.
During a dinner party, she made homemade ice cream using ginger and star anise from her kitchen. Her friends reacted strongly to the unusual flavor combination. “I just remember my friends being like, ‘We’ve never had anything like this before,’” Bavishi told CNBC.
How did Malai start with almost no funding?
Bavishi officially launched Malai during the summer of 2015. She used her regular grocery budget to buy ingredients and prepared ice cream in her own kitchen during weekdays. On weekends, she sold scoops at outdoor markets across New York City.
She relied heavily on friends during the early days. Bavishi said people from “within a four-hour driving radius” came to help her serve customers and hand out survey sheets at markets, reported CNBC.
“I needed to make sure that there was a market for my products and that my idea actually made sense,” she said.
The surveys helped her understand customer preferences and buying habits. She tested different flavours to learn which products connected with buyers.
One major turning point came unexpectedly. A food writer from The New York Times visited her stall and later featured Malai in an article in August 2015, reported CNBC. The story gave the company early visibility and boosted online orders for ice cream pints and frozen pops.
At that stage, Bavishi handled almost everything herself. She packed products, managed shipping and worked on brand-building at the same time.
As the business expanded, she began using credit cards to pay for ingredients and rent space in a shared commercial kitchen. In 2017, she also raised a small amount of money from friends and family investors. The funds helped Malai open pop-up shops and temporary food hall locations across New York.
Why did Pooja Bavishi take on $200,000 in debt?
The company’s first permanent store opened in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood. Bavishi said launching the outlet required around $200,000 in credit card debt, reported CNBC.
She described the decision as “scary,” especially because she did not come from the food industry and had no guarantee that the store would succeed.
The debt took nearly two years to repay. Still, the move helped Malai establish a stable customer base and expand its presence in New York.
Currently, about 80% of the company’s revenue comes from its physical stores. Bavishi said each location is profitable on its own.
To support further growth, Malai raised more outside funding through a seed round in 2023 and another bridge round in 2025. The company has raised $1.8 million in total funding so far. Bavishi remains the majority owner of the business. “You don’t have growth without spending money,” she told CNBC.
For several years, the company focused more on expansion than profits. Profitability finally arrived in 2024 after multiple stores built loyal customer bases. During the same year, Malai’s wholesale and e-commerce business nearly doubled in revenue. The company now sells through grocery stores and online platforms such as Goldbelly.
Bavishi now wants to expand Malai nationwide. That ambition puts the company into competition with larger artisanal brands such as Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, which she described as one of Malai’s role models.
Despite the competition, Bavishi believes her company fills a gap in the American dessert market by making Indian flavours more familiar to mainstream consumers.
“Indian flavours are not experimental,” she said. “These flavours have been enjoyed by billions of people all over the world on a daily basis and for generations,” she told CNBC. She added that introducing those flavours to a wider American audience remains one of her proudest achievements.