Wow! Momo Brand Guidelines: A 2008 Kolkata Kiosk, Wow! China & a Momo Chain

Two college friends and a 36-square-foot counter.

Wow! Momo began in Kolkata in August 2008. Fortune India, in a profile published in its March 2020 issue, tells the story: Sagar Daryani, who had just sat his final commerce exams at St. Xavier’s College, heard that the new Spencer’s hypermarket in the city wanted fast-food brands for small kiosks, and pitched momos. Spencer’s gave him a 36-square-foot kiosk in its Tollygunge store, and he brought in his college friend Binod Kumar Homagai, a capable momo-maker, as partner. English Wikipedia also names the pair as the founders and dates the start to 2008.

The early business was small. For the first five months, Fortune India reported, the founders ran the kiosk with a part-time chef and a helper, and the momos were made in a home kitchen and carried across the city each day. A second outlet opened in January 2009, again inside Spencer’s, at South City Mall. The first dozen outlets all sat inside large stores such as Spencer’s, Big Bazaar and Pantaloons, and the first standalone kiosk opened in 2010 in Sector 5 of Salt Lake, the city’s IT district.

By 2011 the chain had about 17 outlets and, according to the same profile, was finding it harder to win space in Kolkata’s malls, where some landlords already had a Chinese counter selling momos. The founders went outside the city instead, opening in the food court of Phoenix MarketCity in Bengaluru in 2011, followed by malls in Chennai and Pune.

The product suited that kind of growth. Momos, the dumplings associated with Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and India’s Northeast, can be steamed or fried and filled with meat or vegetables, Fortune India noted, and an investor quoted in the article said the format could run from a tiny kiosk to a full restaurant. The company told the magazine that it ran a central kitchen in each city it served.

From malls to Delhi, Mumbai and a second brand.

Outside investors arrived in 2015, when the Indian Angel Network backed the business; by then, Fortune India reported, it had 43 outlets across five cities. The chain reached New Delhi the same year, opening in Hauz Khas Village, and Mumbai in 2017. That year Lighthouse Funds, a private equity firm, invested when the chain had 108 outlets, and in September 2019 it took funding from Tiger Global Management. A third college classmate, the chartered accountant Shah Miftaur Rahman, joined as a co-founder in 2015 and looked after finance, the magazine said.

In December 2018 the company launched Wow! China, a fast-food Chinese format that, Fortune India pointed out, does not serve momos at all, so the two brands do not compete with each other. Of the 318 outlets the company ran at the time of that March 2020 profile, 302 were Wow! Momo outlets in 16 cities and 16 were Wow! China outlets in five cities.

In June 2020 the Times of India put Wow! Momo at 345 outlets in 16 cities.

The menu kept widening. English Wikipedia lists momo-filled burgers, which the company calls MoBurgs, and momo-based desserts, and says a third brand, Wow! Chicken, was launched in December 2021. The company’s website now presents four names, Wow! Momo, Wow! China, Wow! Chicken and Wow! Kulfi, and lists steamed, fried and pan-fried momos alongside the MoBurg.

In January 2024 the Times of India put the chain at 650 outlets in 35 cities.

Design and documentation.

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.

An exclamation mark in the name.

The name itself has been tested in court. In March 2024 the Delhi High Court granted Wow! Momo a prima facie injunction against a multi-cuisine restaurant chain trading as Wow Punjabi, restraining it from using a mark that closely resembled Wow! Momo’s until further orders, CNBC-TV18 reported on 28 March 2024, citing the legal news site Bar and Bench; the order was dated 22 March. In its petition Wow! Momo said it had adopted the “Wow” and “Wow! Momo” marks in 2008 and acquired its web domain in 2013, and it pointed to its registered trademarks using the word “Wow.” The court noted that Wow Punjabi had not answered either a cease-and-desist notice or a later legal notice.

That case shows how much of the identity rests on a single word and its punctuation. Every brand the company has added, from Wow! China to Wow! Kulfi, keeps the same “Wow!” prefix, so the exclamation becomes a family name that can sit in front of any dish. The company’s own website says the chain passed 850 stores in more than 95 cities during the 2025–26 financial year; it gives that figure as a company statement, citing industry reports.

Wow! Momo is still headquartered in Kolkata, where it started, and it sells both through its own outlets and through the delivery apps Swiggy and Zomato, which its website links to directly. The founders remain in the business: Fortune India described Daryani as co-founder and chief executive and Homagai as co-founder and chief operating officer in 2020, and the Times of India still named Daryani as chief executive in January 2024.

For a design guide, Wow! Momo shows how a single snack, a short exclamation and a repeatable prefix can carry a chain from one mall kiosk to many cities. Compare Jumboking, the Mumbai chain built on one street snack, and Faasos, another Indian quick-service brand. For this guide we use chilli red, mustard yellow and a steam white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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