Daawat Cooked Up the Highest Ever Quarter. Investors Responded With a -17% Return in 6 Months.

Seventy Years of Rice, One Very Eventful Quarter

Allow us to introduce LT Foods — the company responsible for the Daawat in your biryani, the Royal in your NRI uncle’s US kitchen cabinet, and apparently the Golden Star in your jasmine rice that you didn’t know was from the same company. LT Foods has been in the rice business since 1950, long before “global FMCG” became a thing startups slap on their pitch decks.

They sell basmati rice across 80 countries. They hold roughly 30% market share in India’s branded basmati market and a staggering ~55% market share in the US basmati category (and 60% in the basmati sub-segment there, per their own concall). Their brands — Daawat, Royal, Heritage, Golden Star, Ecolife, Rozana, Hadeel, and about six others — span premium, mid-tier, and health-focused segments. In short, if you’ve eaten rice in a developed country in the last decade, there’s a reasonable chance LT Foods was involved.

Q3 FY26 delivered the highest-ever quarterly revenue, 9M revenue is up 24% YoY, and CRISIL just upgraded their credit rating two notches in three years. Yet the stock has been punished by Mr. Market because of a 50% US tariff on basmati imports and higher paddy costs. Is the fear overdone? Let’s find out — with data, a little rice pun, and zero apologies.

They Sell Rice. Premium Rice. To People Who Will Absolutely Pay ₹500 for 5kg of It.

The business model is, at its core, elegantly simple. Buy paddy from farmers in Haryana, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh. Age it (yes, rice needs to age like whiskey). Mill it, process it, slap a premium brand on it, and sell it globally. Except the “globally” part is now 80 countries, with manufacturing in India, the US, UK, Netherlands, and Africa. And the “premium brand” part costs a hundred crores in annual marketing spend. So, not so simple after all.

Three segments make the money: Basmati & Specialty Rice (~86-88% of revenue), Organic Foods (~10%), and Ready-to-Heat/Ready-to-Cook (2%, and currently loss-making — which management calls an “investment,” because that’s what you call it when something bleeds). The RTH/RTC segment is targeting ₹400 Cr revenue for breakeven. They’re at far less than that today. The biryani kit is growing 20% month-on-month though, so maybe one day.

Geographically: North America contributes ~46% of 9M FY26 revenue, India ~29%, Europe ~16%, Middle East ~9%. The US business runs on the Royal brand’s near-60% basmati market share. India runs on Daawat’s 23.5% portfolio share and 58 lakh household penetration. The business prints money in specialty rice and is investing heavily in everything else.

Q3 FY26: Highest-Ever Revenue, PAT Slightly Wobbly