The “Ice Cream Man of India”, Raghunandan Kamath, died at the age of 75. The founder of Natural Ice Cream was suffering from a brief illness, and died on Friday night. His company shared the news on it s X (formerly twitter), page. He took his last breath at Mumbai”s HN Reliance Foundation Hospital.

Our thoughts on the sad demise of our patron and founder of Naturals Ice Cream, Late (Shri) Raghunandan Kamath. Indeed a very sad and unfortunate day for us.

Regards,
The Naturals Family.
Date: 18th May, 2024. pic.twitter.com/6x5guC5ae8

— Natural Ice Cream (@Naturalicecream) May 18, 2024

The Natural Ice Cream boasts the use of fresh fruits, dry fruits, milk and sugar. The company strictly claim about not using preservatives, colouring agents, chemicals, gelatin, or any other additives. Born to a fruit vendor in Mangalore, Kamath started his journey at very young age from Mulki, a town in the Mangalore taluk of Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka. Kamath started off to do something on his own at the young age of 14.

He joined his bother”s eatery, from where he dreamed of handcrafting ice cream with real fruit pulp and not just flavours. He started his ice cream business in 1984, with only four workers. Reportedly, Kamath used to sell Pav Bhaji alongside his ice cream to attract more customers. It is safe to safe that the tactic served him good.

At the beginning, Natural only had 12 flavours. The ice cream parlour was situated at the suburbs of Juhu scheme. By 1994, Natural had opened five more outlets, becoming well-known as the ‘Ice Cream of Juhu Scheme’. As the company started to gain popularity, Kamath decided to concentrate solely in refining his product. As per media report, today, the Natural Ice Cream is valued over ₹400 crore. As of of 2020, it had over 165 outlets sprawled over 15 cities in India.