Bengaluru couple quit corporate jobs to serve davangere-style dosas in Mumbai

Mumbai: A craving for home food has turned into a thriving business for Bengaluru couple Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan, who now run a popular dosa cafe in Mumbai serving over 800 dosas daily.

After moving away from Bengaluru post marriage, the couple missed one simple comfort: a hot, buttery Davangere-style benne dosa. Unable to find the same taste in Mumbai, they decided to recreate it themselves.

With no prior experience in the food industry, Iyer and Narayan left their well-paying corporate jobs and opened a small 12-seater cafe in Bandra. Their goal was straightforward: serve authentic Davangere-style dosas — crisp on the outside, soft inside, and finished with generous ghee — without unnecessary variations.Building the perfect dosa took months of trial and error.

The duo experimented with batters and chutneys, faced failures, and refined the recipe until it matched their childhood memories. To stay true to tradition, they even sourced cast iron pans from Karnataka.

Working with limited funds, they built the cafe step by step. Word spread quickly, with customers coming not just for the food but for the nostalgia it evoked — reminders of family kitchens and hometowns.

The venture has since grown significantly. The cafe now reportedly generates ₹1 crore in monthly revenue and serves more than 800 dosas every day.

The business also caught wider attention after cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma visited. Sharma shared that the dosa brought back memories of her childhood.

For Iyer and Narayan, the success is about more than numbers. “We started with a craving for something familiar and ended up creating a place where many others could find a taste of home,” they said.