Meet The Three Friends Who Started Sleepy Owl Coffee in Their Delhi Apartment & Turned it Into a ₹134 Cr Beverage Brand

For decades, coffee in India was either a jar of instant powder at home or a sugary cappuccino in a café. .

The country is the sixth-largest coffee producer in the world, yet nearly all of its best Arabica beans were exported. What remained for domestic consumers was blended with chicory, stripped of character, and marketed as “coffee.

Despite a fast-growing urban market, no brand tried to make high-quality coffee both accessible and convenient for everyday drinkers. That gap lingered for years—until 2016, when three friends from very different backgrounds decided to take a chance on it.

Starting with boxed cold brew made in their living room, Sleepy Owl grew into one of India’s most recognizable coffee brands, shaping how a generation now consumes caffeine and building a multi-category business in the process.