Theobroma Brand Guidelines: The Colaba Brownie Patisserie of 2004 and Its Pastel Shops

A family dessert business moves into a former clinic.

Theobroma is a patisserie and bakery-café chain from Mumbai. It was founded in 2004 by the sisters Kainaz Messman Harchandrai and Tina Messman Wykes, Outlook Business reported in July 2025. Elle India, writing in March 2020, described it as a family start: Kainaz, then 24 and a chef who had worked in the kitchens of The Oberoi, opened the business with her parents and her sister. In an excerpt from the sisters’ book Baking a Dream: The Theobroma Story, published by Scroll.in in October 2019, Kainaz wrote that her father, Farokh, paid for the space and the bakery equipment, and that her mother, Kamal, already ran a cake and dessert business from home.

The first outlet opened in October 2004 at Cusrow Baug, a gated residential estate on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, in a space that had been a doctor’s clinic, according to the book excerpt. Her grandparents’ flat nearby became the kitchen, Kainaz wrote. The family worked out the layout and interiors themselves on a limited budget, she added, and only later saw that they had not planned how guests and staff would move through the room. Elle India described the first shop as a small patisserie with four tables, and reported that its desserts sold out on the opening day, while Kainaz stayed in the kitchen baking more instead of attending the ribbon cutting.

The name came late. According to Elle India, which drew on the sisters’ book, the family considered “Tai,” a blend of Tina and Kainaz, as well as “Square Circle” and “Divine Calories,” and Tina proposed “Kainaz Messman,” which was turned down. Theobroma was suggested by a London sugar broker Tina knew through work. The word joins the Greek theos, god, and broma, food, to mean “food of the gods,” the translation the company still gives on its website. Elle noted that at first nobody liked it, few could pronounce it and nobody knew what it meant, and suggested that this is what made it easy to remember.

Brownies, then a range.

Brownies sit at the centre of the Theobroma story. Speaking to Man’s World India in May 2020, the sisters traced the recipe to their mother, who baked a walnut brownie at the request of a neighbour in their Colaba building who had lived in America, and later sold it through her catering business. When the shop opened, Kainaz said, one brownie was not going to be enough, so the sisters developed a whole range of them. In the same interview they named carrot cake, frangipane and tiramisu among the desserts that Mumbai customers were at first unsure about. Kainaz also said she is sometimes introduced on television and radio as “Mumbai’s Brownie Queen.” For the original menu, Elle India reported, a close friend of hers acted as a taster, and dishes she did not approve were left off.

The range has since widened. The company’s website describes brownies, cakes, desserts and chocolates alongside breads and savouries, and it sells through its own patisseries, its app and online orders for delivery. It presents the products as based on home-style recipes made with fresh ingredients; that is the company’s own description.

The look of the shops changed early. Kainaz designed the first outlet’s interior herself, Elle India reported, choosing wooden flooring and a red-brick wall for a rustic feel; within days it looked shabby, and the pastel interiors that Elle called distinctive to the patisserie came much later.

From Colaba the chain spread across India. Outlook Business listed Mumbai, Delhi and the NCR, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru among its cities in July 2025. As of that month, Bar & Bench described Theobroma as a pan-India chain of patisseries with more than 250 stores in more than 30 cities; the company’s own website also says it has stores in over 30 cities.

How Indian food chains present themselves.

Several of the Indian sweet-shop, snack and restaurant chains in this guide began at a single counter or kitchen. Some keep the name of a founding town or family, and the shopfront, the sweet box and the takeaway bag carry that name long after the business has spread beyond its home city. Some, like Bikanervala, keep a second name for the packed snacks they sell in shops, so that the restaurant and the pack can live side by side.

The menu is usually the clearest part of the identity. Chains in this group present themselves through named dishes and drinks: bhujia and kaju katli, momos, vada pav, masala chai, barbecue platters, dosa and idli, or cakes and brownies. Their websites group products by those names rather than by ingredient, and many add gift boxes and festive ranges to the everyday menu.

Networks are published by the companies themselves, as outlet lists, city pages and franchise forms for domestic and international partners, and they change often. Some brands have moved from street-facing shops to delivery-only kitchens that carry no signage at all, which leaves the pack, the app listing and the social feed to do the work of a shopfront. Where a count is given in this guide, it is dated and attributed.

Ownership ranges from family businesses run by a second or third generation to groups that hold several restaurant brands and to companies listed on an Indian stock exchange. Corporate pages describe founders, owners and franchise networks; this guide sets those claims beside dated reporting in the business and trade press, and keeps each company’s own account clearly marked as its own.

From a family firm to private equity.

Theobroma has taken outside investors twice. The private equity firm ICICI Venture invested in the company in 2017, Outlook Business reported in July 2025. That month, the shareholders and promoters of Theobroma Foods Private Limited agreed to sell a substantial majority of the company to the Indian private equity firm ChrysCapital, subject to closing conditions, Bar & Bench reported on 17 July 2025. The advisers it listed included a law firm acting for Theobroma, its shareholders and ICICI Venture, and a separate firm advising the founding Messman family — Kainaz, Tina and their parents — on protecting its minority position. As of November 2026, ChrysCapital lists Theobroma among its current investments on its website.

Day-to-day management is now led by a professional team. The company’s website names a chief executive, Rishi Gour, and heads of production and product development, marketing, finance, technology and operations, several of whom came from large consumer and restaurant groups.

For a design guide, Theobroma shows how a family patisserie can keep its first name, an unfamiliar Greek phrase, and a soft pastel shop style as it grows into a national chain. Compare Starbucks, another café brand built around a distinctive name, and Chaayos, an Indian café chain of a later generation. For this guide we use a cocoa brown, a pastel rose, a pastel mint and a cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Theobroma’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.