A Delhi based serial entrepreneur Saurabh Mehdiratta, founder and managing director of Ozeca, has launched Poodyno, a dinosaur-themed ice cream brand with two outlets now operational on National Highway 44 in Haryana. The brand’s first outlet opened at Mannat Haveli, Kurukshetra, and the second at Mannat Sitara, near Pipli, Karnal, both within a span of 30 days.
Poodyno enters the market as an experiential dessert format aimed at families, highway travellers, children, Gen Z consumers, and young parents looking for more than a conventional ice cream stop. The brand combines themed presentation, a distinctive product format, and an environment designed to drive repeat visits and consumer engagement. In a category that has historically been driven by price, flavour range, and distribution reach, Poodyno is attempting to compete through experience and retail memory.
The launch comes at a time when India’s frozen dessert category is expanding steadily. According to TechSci Research, the India frozen dessert market was valued at USD 4.86 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 9.25 billion by 2030, reflecting a CAGR of 11.32%. The wider food services industry is also seeing momentum beyond major metros, with Tier-II and Tier-III cities emerging as important consumption markets for branded dining and retail formats. Industry reports suggest that nearly 94% of restaurant operators plan to expand into smaller cities, highlighting the scale of the opportunity outside traditional urban centres.
Poodyno’s first two locations on national highway reflect that shift. By placing the brand inside established hospitality properties on a major intercity corridor, the company is targeting consumers in transit as well as destination visitors. Highway dining in India has increasingly become a category of its own, shaped by family travel, weekend leisure, and the demand for differentiated food experiences that are visible, Instagram-friendly, and easy to remember. The brand’s format is designed to capture that behaviour.
At the centre of Poodyno’s offering is a proprietary dinosaur-shaped handcrafted waffle cone, paired with fusion flavours tailored for the Indian palate. The company says the format was created to make the product itself part of the experience, not just the point of sale. Full-format outlets also include a live dinosaur ride experience, which the brand positions as an engagement element intended to improve dwell time and create organic social media visibility. The broader idea is to turn a dessert visit into an event.
Poodyno’s founder & CEO Saurabh Mehdiratta said the market opportunity lies not just in product quality, but in how a brand frames the consumer moment. “The Indian ice cream market is growing, but a lot of the category still looks the same at street level,” he said. “Poodyno is built around the idea that a food brand can be memorable, not just functional. We wanted to create a format that children enjoy, parents remember, and travellers talk about.”
He added that the launch is rooted in long-term business thinking rather than short-term novelty. “A serious consumer brand must have both emotional appeal and operational discipline,” Mehdiratta said. “The goal is to build something that can scale, adapt, and stay relevant across cities.”
Mehdiratta is not a first-time entrepreneur. A commerce graduate of Delhi University and an MBA from Manipal University, he spent nearly a decade in advertising and media sales before moving into entrepreneurship. He later entered the import-export sector before founding Ozeca in 2013. Ozeca’s company profile describes it as a turnkey solutions firm engaged in retail display, branding, and related execution services. Mehdiratta continues to lead both ventures, giving Poodyno a founder profile that combines consumer-brand thinking with experience in retail presentation and execution.
That background is likely to matter as the company builds out its next phase. Poodyno says it is developing a franchise-led expansion model focused on Tier-II markets and highway-corridor locations. This strategy is consistent with wider industry trends. Grant Thornton Bharat and NRAI’s report on restaurant growth beyond metros found that smaller cities are becoming the next major frontier for food services, supported by rising consumption, better infrastructure, and digitally aware customers. The report also noted that lower operating costs and faster breakeven timelines are encouraging brands to look beyond saturated metro markets.
For Poodyno, the franchise model is being positioned as a turnkey experiential retail system, covering brand identity, supply chain access, retail environment standards, and marketing support. The company says it is actively onboarding franchise partners as it looks to expand beyond its initial outlets. In the brand’s view, the opportunity is not simply to open more stores, but to create a repeatable format that can travel across regions while retaining its visual identity and consumer appeal.
Since launch, the brand reports that it has seen organic visibility across social media without paid amplification, with consumer-generated content emerging from both outlets. It also says the early response has come from a multi-age audience, including children, Gen Z consumers, and millennial parents. For a new brand, that mix matters: it suggests the concept is resonating not only as a product, but as a family outing and visual experience.
Poodyno is currently operational at Mannat Haveli, Kurukshetra (NH 44) and Mannat Sitara, near Pipli, Karnal (NH 44). The company says its next phase will focus on franchise onboarding and expansion into selected Tier-II markets and highway locations. In a crowded consumer market, the brand is betting that novelty alone is not enough; the experience has to be structured, repeatable, and commercially viable.
