Ahmedabad had plenty of options for ice cream. What it lacked, until recently, was an ice cream brand that treated the scoop like a dish rather than a commodity. That gap is exactly where Crinkle & Co. has planted itself, quietly becoming one of the most talked-about ice cream brands in Ahmedabad for anyone paying attention to the city’s dessert scene.
A Name Built on Texture, Not Trend
The name traces back to something almost mundane: the crinkle cookie, with its familiar cracked, uneven top. It’s an odd reference point for an ice cream brand, but it makes sense once you hear the reasoning. The crack represents craftsmanship, the kind that can’t be mass-produced. The “& Co.” arrived later, once a single idea outgrew one person and became a team effort.
Even the visual identity leans into restraint rather than spectacle. The typography is traditional with a modern edge, deliberately avoiding anything that reads as trendy or temporary. Every packaging and store decision is built around one instinct: slow people down long enough to actually taste what they’re eating.
The Chef Behind the Brand
Crinkle & Co. was founded by Aneri Kothari, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef whose culinary path ran through some of the world’s most demanding kitchens, including Central and Maido in Lima, Peru, both fixtures on global fine-dining lists. Before returning to India, she spent time leading product development and food operations, work that would later shape how Crinkle deliberately approaches flavour.
Her return home involved hosting chef-driven tasting menu pop-ups and co-founding Oido before she eventually arrived at a simpler, more specific idea: ice cream made with the same rigour as fine dining. Growing up in a city where ice cream is practically a cultural institution, she found herself questioning why nobody had pushed the format further, with fewer artificial shortcuts and more actual technique. Crinkle became her answer.
The People Running It
Crinkle isn’t a solo operation anymore, and its team reflects a deliberate mix of culinary, business, and financial expertise.
Zarin Mirza, Operations & Business Development Partner, brings over a decade of culinary experience and functions as the brand’s operational spine, managing day-to-day work and relationships with vendors and collaborators.
Meet Jatakia, Brand & Growth Partner, who shapes Crinkle’s identity and long-term growth direction, drawing on a marketing and branding background.
Udeet Shah, Strategic Partner & Investor, has spent over ten years building F&B brands in Ahmedabad and lends that network and experience to Crinkle’s expansion thinking.
Rushabh Shah, a chartered accountant serving as finance strategy partner, oversees the financial structure that keeps the growth sustainable rather than reckless.
What’s Actually on the Menu
The brand currently runs eight signature flavours. A number that is deliberately kept small. Chocolate Caramel Brownie remains the easy crowd favourite, but Zesty Cheesecake is the flavour that best captures Crinkle’s philosophy, translating a baked cheesecake’s tang, richness, and biscuit crumble into something that eats like a plated dessert rather than a scoop.
Seasonal drops carry the same logic further. The Baarish collection, built around monsoon memory, turned rain-soaked moments into flavour: Chai Affogato for the ritual of dunking biscuits into chai, Corn on the Cob for roadside roasted bhutta, and Sitafal Matcha for green, rain-drenched drives. Local references run through the regular menu too. Filter Kapi nods to South Indian coffee culture, while jamun and sitafal lean straight into Gujarat’s own palate.
Staying Put, For Now
Despite the traction, Crinkle isn’t rushing outside Ahmedabad. The team’s stated approach is to earn expansion by first building something people genuinely return for, a slower, more deliberate strategy than most growing F&B brands attempt. Bakery products and further chef-led experiences are already in the pipeline, but geographical expansion into the rest of Gujarat and India remains a “when it’s ready” conversation, not a roadmap.
The long-term ambition, though, is unambiguous: to become one of India’s most respected dessert brands, built around craftsmanship rather than scale for its own sake.
If Crinkle’s first few years are any indication, that ambition isn’t just marketing language. It’s the actual operating principle behind every scoop.
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