DSM Fresh Foods FY26: Revenue Doubled to ₹221 Cr, Operating Cash Flow Went to Minus ₹48 Cr
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1. At a Glance
DSM Fresh Foods — the company behind Zappfresh — closed FY26 with revenue of ₹221 crore, up 68.9% from ₹131 crore, and net profit of ₹14.4 crore against ₹9.1 crore the year before. On the surface, a growth-stage protein company doing everything right: scale rising, profits rising, ROCE at 23.3%.
Then the cash flow statement arrives. Operating activities consumed ₹47.8 crore during FY26, deeper than the ₹16.7 crore drain of FY25. Receivables swelled from ₹16.9 crore to ₹55.6 crore in twelve months. The profit is on the P&L; the cash is somewhere in the debtor ledger.
The company listed on the BSE SME platform on 7 October 2025, raising ₹59.06 crore fresh. Within the same year, its monitoring agency flagged deviations in how those proceeds were spent, and its auditor noted unsecured loans to two directors that did not comply with Section 185 of the Companies Act.
Growth that outruns its own collections tends to raise one quiet question. That question runs through the rest of this entry.
2. Introduction
Incorporated in May 2015, DSM Fresh Foods operates the Zappfresh brand — a technology-enabled fresh-protein platform headquartered in New Delhi, selling chicken, mutton, fish and seafood to both retail consumers and institutional customers. Ten years in, FY26 was its first full year as a listed company.
The year was defined less by the core meat business and more by the number of things bolted onto it. In January 2026, the company moved into ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook exports by acquiring a stake in Avyom Foodtech for around ₹7.5 crore, a deal that brought in the Ambrozia frozen-foods business and a 15-tonne-per-day facility. The stake, initially 51%, was raised toward 76% and then, per the 2 June 2026 board outcome, approved for full acquisition of up to ₹10 crore.
Alongside sat the launch of Meevaa Foods, a frozen convenience brand, and the incorporation in April 2026 of Varuna Aquatech (71% held) for aquaculture and seafood processing. The FY26 story, in short, is a meat retailer rearranging itself into a multi-category food platform at considerable speed.
3. Business Model: WTF Do They Even Do?
At its core, DSM sells protein. The FY26 revenue split of the non-vegetarian categories is chicken 50%, mutton 23%, seafood 27%, running across a catalogue of 300-plus SKUs. Geography spreads across five states, with Karnataka and Haryana at 28% each, Maharashtra 23%, and Delhi and Uttar Pradesh at 12% each.
The processing model runs in two layers: slaughtering and cleaning are outsourced, while value-added processing happens at company plants in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and a larger Chandigarh facility rated at roughly 5,500 tonnes annually, which houses Meevaa. Last-mile delivery is outsourced to third-party logistics. So the company owns the middle of the chain — the processing and the brand — and rents the two ends.
The channel mix is where it gets interesting. Management put B2B (HoReCa) at 68% of revenue and B2C at 32% for FY26, a reversal from prior years. On the FY26 concall, the CFO explained the margin arithmetic behind that shift: B2C gross margin runs 45–50% while B2B runs 20–25%, so as institutional sales grew, consolidated margins compressed even as absolute profit rose. Management said it expects the mix to normalise back toward 50:50 over time.
It is a farm-to-fork platform whose fastest-growing channel is also its lowest-margin one. The company frames this as deliberate volume absorption. The margin line, described below, records the trade-off.
4. Financials Overview
Figures are in ₹ crore. With no standalone quarterly split published, the reporting cadence here is half-yearly.
Metric
H2 FY26 (Mar ’26)
YoY (H2 FY25)
Prev Half (H1 FY26)
Revenue
125
64
96
Operating Profit
16
11
15
PAT
7
7
7
EPS (₹)
3.29
4.02
4.29
Revenue for the half nearly doubled year-on-year, from ₹64 crore to ₹125 crore. Operating profit rose from ₹11 crore to ₹16 crore — growth, but slower than the top line, which is the mix effect showing up in the arithmetic. Reported PAT held flat at ₹7 crore across all three half-years shown.
EPS fell from ₹4.02 to ₹3.29 year-on-year even as profit held. That is the share count, not the business: the October 2025 fresh issue expanded the equity base, so the
