A 10-Minute Pitch at a College Event Helped a Sibling Duo Win Rs 35 Lakh for Their Coffee Startup

On a January evening in 2025, the lights inside an IIT Bombay auditorium settled on a young woman holding a small plastic cup. Inside it sat a frozen espresso shot. In front of her, a hall full of students leaned forward in anticipation. A panel of angel investors watched, ready to raise their bidding cards.

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Sheena and Karan Khurana understood that her moment on that stage was shaped by years that did not look dramatic from the outside. It was shaped by a tiny kiosk in Gurugram, by long nights of trial batches, and by conversations with her younger brother Karan about why people deserved better coffee at home.

Now, they had 10 minutes.

By the end of the pitch, investor bids for Zenma Coffee had crossed Rs 3 crore. Within minutes, Sheena and Karan secured on-spot funding that added strength and validation to a journey they had built from the ground up.

The moment felt sharp and bright. But the path that led to it was slow, steady and deeply personal.

This is the story behind Zenma’s 10-minute pitch at The Ten Minute Million at IIT Bombay’s E-Summit early this year, and the life that exists beneath the spotlight.

From economics classrooms to a tiny coffee counter

Sheena grew up in Delhi, studied Economics at Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, and then built a corporate career in real estate private equity. Karan studied Economics at St Stephen’s College and was still in college when coffee began to take over their conversations.

In her office years, Sheena spent a lot of time in cafes. She noticed a gap. In many North Indian homes, people still reached for instant coffee. Cafes, on the other hand, served layered, fragrant drinks built on fresh espresso.

“I was going to coffee shops every day, spending Rs 250 to 300 on a cup. At home, we still had instant coffee that just did not taste the same,” she recalls.

Curious and slightly stubborn, she saved up her salary and flew to Rome for a barista course. There, she saw how seriously the world took Indian beans. Back home, she felt restless about what passed for coffee in most kitchens.

When she quit her job, she did not go straight into an online brand. She rented a small space in the same building where she once worked and opened a kiosk named ‘16 Grams’. Karan helped between classes. Office-goers stopped by, some out of curiosity, some returning every day.

That kiosk opened in 2019. It gave the siblings something precious: a close view of what people actually drink and ask for. It taught them that people wanted the depth and flavour of cafe coffee. They wanted the strength of espresso, especially in milk-based drinks. Yet most homes did not have espresso machines, and many did not want to buy one.

That gap sat in the siblings' minds for months.

COVID shutters the shop, but not the search for answers

When the pandemic hit in 2020, footfall vanished. The kiosk, built with their own savings, could not survive such long stretches without customers. By 2021, Sheena and Karan wound it down.

They moved online with beans and ground coffee. Orders came in, but questions kept coming too. People wanted cafe-style drinks. They wanted the same taste they knew from outside, without buying an expensive espresso machine for their homes.

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“So the question became about how to give people espresso without the need to buy a machine,” Sheena says.

From their kiosk days, they already knew most cafe orders were milk-based. Those drinks rely entirely on espresso. Without the machine, the drink simply does not feel the same.

They kept returning to the puzzle.

Months of experiments and a breakthrough in ice

Anyone who has worked behind a coffee counter knows how fragile espresso can be. Once you pull the shot, the crema starts to collapse within minutes. The aroma, oils and flavour begin to fall away. You drink it, or you lose it. 

For months at the end of 2020 and through 2021, the siblings experimented relentlessly. They pulled fresh espresso on a commercial-grade machine, cooled it rapidly, changed grind sizes, altered extraction times and tested several kinds of containers to see what preserved the crema. They ruined plenty of batches. But they kept going.

The turning point arrived when they began using a rapid freezing technique. Instead of leaving the shot to cool on its own, they froze it immediately at extremely low temperatures so the flavour compounds stayed intact. Rapid freezing prevents the crema from breaking, and stops the oils from oxidising, which keeps the taste close to a freshly pulled shot.

“For us to keep the same taste, we had to flash freeze it. We did a lot of experiments, and people really could not tell that it did not come out of a machine,” Sheena says. Each shot is pulled fresh, measured, sealed, and frozen within minutes. They remain stable for several months inside a home freezer. 

These trials eventually became Zenma’s core product: frozen espresso shots that melt into café-style coffee at home, without any grinder or machine. The shots stay in a freezer for months, with just coffee and water inside. 

The brand officially launched in November 2023. Very soon, Zenma’s frozen shots were listed on quick commerce platforms such as Blinkit and Zepto in cities like Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

As the product reached more households through these platforms, another question became relevant for many readers: what does a cup actually cost?

The startup now sells assorted boxes with 10 frozen espresso shots. A cup made from these shots usually comes to around Rs 70. For many households, it offers a middle path: the taste they associate with cafes, without the cost or upkeep of buying and maintaining an espresso machine.

An early investor and a national test

In 2024, Zenma caught the attention of early-stage investor 100X.VC, which came on board with seed funding and a formal thesis around the brand’s potential. This helped the team strengthen production and packaging and expand into more cities. Over the first year, they sold tens of thousands of frozen shots across their website and quick commerce channels.

Their next big milestone came with Shark Tank India Season 4. Sheena and Karan walked onto the set with their frozen espresso pods and asked for Rs 60 lakh in exchange for 3.5 percent equity.

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Some sharks already knew the product. Peyush Bansal praised the taste. Aman Gupta said that he drank their coffee regularly.

The discussion that followed was sharp. Investors probed logistics, pricing, customer behaviour and storage. They questioned whether Indian homes would adopt a frozen espresso format or stay with instant coffee and machines.

However, Zenma left without a deal. But the experience was a memorable one, Sheena recalls. 

An unexpected email from IIT Bombay

At the start of 2025, an email landed in Zenma’s inbox from the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Bombay. The team was inviting them to apply for The Ten Minute Million (TTMM), the flagship on-spot funding event at E-Summit, the institute’s annual entrepreneurship festival. 

Founders in TTMM have just 10 minutes to pitch in front of a panel of seasoned investors and a live audience of thousands. The best startups can secure funding commitments of up to Rs 35 lakh (3.5 million) on the spot, with bids often crossing several crores. 

Over the years, TTMM has featured well-known angel investors such as Ajeet Khurana, Sanjay Mehta and Siddharth Ladsariya, and has become a high-pressure but high-trust platform for early-stage founders. 

For Zenma, the invitation came just days before the event. “The team reached out, and we applied within two or three days. We had been thinking of raising some capital again, so it felt like the right moment,” Sheena says. 

When they reached IIT Bombay’s Powai campus, they found a stage unlike any pitch room they had seen. A packed auditorium. Students in the balconies. A huge screen showing their brand name. Live streaming for family, friends and strangers watching from home. 

“We practised the pitch a couple of times, then went on stage. I did not realise it would be such a grand setup, with so many students and such a large audience,” she remembers.

Closing a deal in 10 minutes!

Zenma’s pitch took around five to six minutes. The questions lasted another four to five. Then the auction began.

Each investor held a bidding card. A minimum collective bid had to be crossed for the founders to receive the full Rs 35 lakh. If the total stayed below that line, there would be no cheque. “We were more excited than nervous,” Sheena says. “There was a clear target. If the bids crossed that number, we knew we would get the Rs 35 lakh.”

The bids rose quickly. The total crossed Rs 3 crore. The threshold was cleared with ease. Multiple investors joined the round, and their pooled commitments formed the final Rs 35 lakh that Zenma received.

Fireworks lit up the stage as the hall applauded.

“There were fireworks on stage. Our family and friends were watching the livestream. It was a very special moment,” Sheena says.

Life after TTMM

The event did not rewrite Zenma’s story, but it added things Sheena and Karan hold close.

Mentors they can reach out to: “We reach out when we need help or guidance,” Sheena says. “We share quarterly updates.”

Credibility in investor rooms:A strong performance at TTMM shows that a startup can handle intense scrutiny under a time limit.

Visibility with young consumers: E-Summit attendees are early adopters. Many of them shape purchasing trends in their networks. Zenma gained that visibility in one evening.

What’s brewing now?

Zenma continues to sell frozen espresso shots in multiple roast profiles across major cities. The team refines recipes, works on shelf stability and listens closely to what customers do with the product.

Their mission stays steady: to help people make café-style espresso drinks at home, especially milk-based ones, without buying a machine.

Inside their production space, experiments continue. New roasts. New freezing patterns. New stories from customers who make lattes before work and iced coffees on afternoons at home.

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The TTMM funding sits beside many other steps in Zenma’s journey: a kiosk in Gurugram, a pandemic setback, months of freezing experiments, an early seed round, a Shark Tank appearance and a growing community of people who trust what the siblings have built.

Those 10 minutes at IIT Bombay did something meaningful. They reminded Sheena and Karan that a small idea, shaped with patience and belief, can walk into a room full of scrutiny and still earn respect.

And sometimes, that reminder is enough to keep building.