iD Fresh to open second UAE factory in Sharjah as it eyes $1 billion India IPO next year

Ajman: iD Fresh Food, best known for ready-to-cook South Indian staples such as idli and dosa batter, and porotta, will open a second factory in Sharjah by the end of this year. The move doubles the company’s UAE production capacity, as it prepares for a planned $1 billion IPO in India next year.Chairman and Global CEO PC Musthafa confirmed both milestones in an interview with Gulf News. The company remains fully owned by its five founders, with no institutional investors on board yet.Sign up for our daily business newsletter, Cheques & Balances.Musthafa, whose definition of "clean label" extends far beyond ingredients to encompass the entire supply chain—from sourcing and manufacturing to packaging and distribution—has built iD Fresh around one uncompromising philosophy.“Growth at any cost is the philosophy of a cancer cell. I didn't want to be a cancer cell,” he said, explaining why the company has consistently refused to sacrifice its core principles for faster expansion.It is this approach, he says, that underpins the next chapter of iD Fresh's UAE journey, with a new Sharjah factory set to open nearly a decade after the company established its first regional production facility in Ajman."We are now setting up a new factory. Hopefully, by December, we should be up and running," Musthafa said as we toured the iD Fresh assembly line in Ajman. "Demand has risen that much."The Sharjah factory will double the company's production capacity in the UAE, allowing it to meet rising demand across the Gulf while preparing for the next decade of growth."We got this factory around 10 years back,” he says from the iD Fresh factory in Ajman. “At that time, we thought the market was this size. Now the market is already much bigger. We have to look at what the market will be in the next 10 years,” he said.“Growth at any cost is the philosophy of a cancer cell. I didn't want to be a cancer cell,” says PC Musthafa, Chairman and Global CEO of iD Fresh Food, during a tour of the company's Ajman manufacturing facility. Billion-dollar IPOThe UAE expansion comes as the Bengaluru-headquartered fresh food company prepares for what Musthafa described as a "$1 billion IPO" targeted for October next year. “We are looking at a billion-dollar IPO in October in India, one year from now.”According to Musthafa, the listing is not primarily aimed at raising fresh capital."We are not looking at any revenue fundraising, but we have a lot of shareholders who might be looking at some secondary exit," he said. "Plus, it was more like a childhood dream."  Musthafa confirmed the work to get the company listed is underway; however, he did not specify which stock exchange it plans to list on.Geopolitical tensions. Talk of an AI bubble. Mounting economic pressures. None of it fazes Musthafa. Pressed on whether the current climate might delay his plans, he pointed instead to the strength of his fundamentals. His confidence, it seems, is not misplaced.Founded in 2005, iD Fresh Food has grown from a ₹50,000 (approx. Dh1,900 as per today’s exchange rates) start-up into one of India’s largest fresh food brands, with a presence in more than 100 cities and operations across 10 countries, employing around 2,700 people. He says it feeds more than three million people daily. The company reported revenue of around ₹680 crore (about $78 million or Dh287 million) in FY2025 and has delivered a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 20 per cent over the past five years, according to India CEO Rajat Diwakar in an interview with The Economic Times in April this year.Inside iD Fresh Food's Ajman factory, where batter is made using natural fermentation and automated production processes before being distributed across the UAE and wider Gulf region.Betting on UAE, expanding beyond itiD Fresh is preparing to enter Singapore, the UK and parts of the US with its fresh range this financial year, adding to markets where its frozen parathas and coffee decoctions are already sold.Musthafa remains bullish on the UAE specifically. "UAE is my Sehwag," he said, referencing the explosive Indian cricketer. "Every time there's a target, we make it up from the UAE market."He is unmoved by competition from established food brands. "I don't look at local players as competition," he said. "Grinders at home are my competition."My Business: Dubai brothers turn surplus food into 70% savings appA business built on refusing shortcutsiD Fresh’s story began with 50,000 rupees and a single grinder. Musthafa and his cousins set out to fix a hygiene problem they had spotted with unbranded, packaged idli batter sold in plastic pouches on the street.It took nine months to get the recipe right. It took nearly a year to sell 700 packets."Anything in a packaged form is considered an unhealthy range," Musthafa said, explaining early customer resistance. Batter, in most households, was always homemade.Rather than cut costs to survive, the company held the line on ingredients. That decision has defined iD Fresh ever since.Employees at iD Fresh Food's Ajman factory oversee the production and packaging of fresh food products destined for supermarkets across the UAE and neighbouring markets.Quality control, the iD Fresh wayMusthafa is exacting about what goes into iD Fresh products. The company's UAE production happens in Ajman, split across three lines: batter, parathas and chapatis."I will not add any ingredients in the food that my mother cannot identify," he said. No preservatives. No artificial flavours. No coating agents or stabilisers."None of this nonsense," he said, referring to E-numbers and reducing agents (food additives). The batter follows a traditional process: soaking, stone grinding, natural fermentation. "The product is exactly the same thing that my grandmother used to make," Musthafa said. "We do it at a larger scale."Every raw material is tested before entering the factory. Finished products pass through a check-weigher and a metal detector to catch contamination risks.Musthafa is taking transparency further still. On 3 August, he will sit for a lie detector test in front of a student audience in Bangkok."I have nothing to hide," he said. "You build the factory. You know how to make it."iD Fresh Food's Ajman plant uses customised food-processing technology and AI-driven demand forecasting to help minimise wastage while producing fresh food at scale.Fixing the industry's biggest problemFresh food businesses live or die on wastage. iD Fresh once lost 90 per cent of what it sent to market unsold.The company began tracking store-level and item-level sales data more than a decade ago. It now uses AI to forecast demand down to individual delivery routes and stores."This month we are running at less than one per cent wastage of the batter," Musthafa said, for a product with a seven-to-eight-day shelf life. "That is the golden target to achieve."My Business: How this former waiter went from selling dried fish to running his own company in DubaiScaling further, without cutting cornersThe new Sharjah factory will double UAE capacity, built to meet demand the company says has outgrown its current Ajman site. It follows the pattern that built iD Fresh in the first place: identifying unmet demand, then engineering the machinery to meet it without lowering standards.The company has adapted mochi-paste machines from Japan to grind batter at scale, and pastry-making machines to layer parathas. "That really sets us apart," Musthafa said, "because we always stay ahead of competition with innovation."New products are following the same clean-label rules. A protein batter, made with ragi, delivers 15 grams of protein in two idlis, Musthafa said, more than two eggs. A second version, launching within two months, is designed to deliver roughly 40 grams of protein in two dosas.Regional tastes are shaping the pipeline too. Market research found that 62 per cent of the company's paratha customers in Saudi Arabia choose peri-peri flavours. A Peri Peri Parotta and a Zaatar Paratha are both due to launch within two months.My Business: Dubai brothers turn surplus food into 70% savings appMy Business: Meet Dubai entrepreneur who left diplomacy career to become a bakerMy Business: Dubai saucepreneur's journey to Chief Chilli Officer Arabian Food Production Company on a mission to support GCC food security goals