Anmol Industries Filed For A ₹1,800 Crore IPO In Which The Company Gets Nothing

In this storyAnmol Industries

Anmol Industries has filed draft papers for an initial public offering of up to ₹1,800 crore, about $188 million, structured entirely as an offer for sale.

The sole selling shareholder is the Baijnath Choudhary & Family Trust, which holds roughly 84 per cent of the Kolkata company. Anmol issues no new shares and receives none of the proceeds. The shares are proposed for listing on the NSE and BSE, with ICICI Securities, IIFL Capital Services and Intensive Fiscal Services managing the offering.

Founded in 1994, Anmol makes biscuits, cookies and cakes across around 70 brands and exports to 31 countries. It operates seven manufacturing facilities across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha, with installed capacity of about 3.61 lakh tonnes a year for biscuits and cookies and 16,372 tonnes for cakes as of 31 March 2026. Its distribution reaches 4,266 pin codes across 24 states and two union territories, and it is India's fourth-largest biscuit brand by sales.

Revenue from operations rose about 28 per cent to ₹2,101.8 crore in the year to March 2026. Net profit rose roughly fivefold to ₹190.9 crore.

It competes with Britannia Industries, Parle Products, ITC and Mrs Bectors Food Specialities.

This is Anmol's second attempt at a listing. It filed draft papers in June 2018 for a ₹750 crore offer for sale and received SEBI approval that September, but did not proceed. At the time it reported total income of ₹1,240 crore and net profit of around ₹72 crore for FY17.

The profit figure is the one to interrogate, because of how it moved relative to revenue.

Revenue rose about 28 per cent. Net profit rose roughly fivefold, from an implied ₹38 crore or so to ₹190.9 crore. That takes net margin from around 2 per cent to about 9 per cent in a single year, which approaches the level Britannia operates at.

Revenue growth of 28 per cent does not produce that. For a biscuit manufacturer the dominant variable is input cost: wheat flour, sugar, edible oil and packaging. Those follow commodity cycles rather than management decisions, and a margin that expands this sharply on falling input prices can contract the same way when they turn.

Which makes the timing worth naming plainly. A family trust selling ₹1,800 crore of stock is taking the business to market in the year its profit multiplied fivefold, on a margin that may not be the normal state of the business. That is optimal for the seller and something a buyer should price carefully.

The 2018 comparison is instructive. Anmol sought ₹750 crore then, against FY17 profit of about ₹72 crore. It now seeks ₹1,800 crore, 2.4 times as much, against profit 2.65 times higher. The ask has scaled with earnings rather than ahead of them, which is at least consistent.

What Anmol has built is the asset that venture-funded consumer brands spend years and enormous sums trying to buy.

Distribution reaching 4,266 pin codes across 24 states, seven plants and 3.61 lakh tonnes of annual biscuit capacity is thirty-two years of accumulation, funded largely from the company's own cash. There was no growth round, no burn, no land-grab phase. The trust still owns 84 per cent, which tells you how little outside capital the business ever needed.

Set that against what this year has shown about the alternative route. Sugar Cosmetics raised in September at roughly a quarter of its 2022 valuation, having shut 30 to 40 per cent of the physical stores it opened, with revenue down 20 per cent and losses more than doubled. It was trying to buy in five years, with investor money, a version of what Anmol assembled slowly.

The comparison should not be pushed too far. Biscuits are a commodity sold on price and availability, and the category rewards exactly the patience that kills a brand competing on novelty. But the underlying point holds. In Indian consumer goods, distribution is the durable asset and it is very difficult to purchase quickly.

The listing itself fits the year's dominant pattern. NSE's issue was entirely an offer for sale. CarDekho's proposed issue is roughly 90 per cent. Tonbo Imaging's, cleared by SEBI today, is all of it. Indian public markets in late 2026 are functioning primarily as a route for existing owners to convert holdings into cash, and Anmol is the purest example: a family trust selling a slice of a business that will not change in any respect the day after it lists.

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