The Story of Franz & Filo.
A Franzbroetchen named one half. An Indian co-founder named the other. The rest was 27 hours of fermentation.
Franz comes from the Franzbroetchen - the iconic Hamburg pastry that is to Hamburg what the croissant is to Paris. German baking craft at its most approachable.
Filo takes its name from Filo dough — the tissue-paper-thin, unleavened pastry that demands more patience and precision than any other dough in European baking. Stretched by hand until you can read through it, it cannot be rushed or forced. A dough that rewards only those who respect the process.
Franz & Filo started as a passion project: German croissants, baguettes, Bretzels, Franzbroetchen. What we discovered was a deeper alignment we hadn't anticipated. The Dreistufensauerteig - the three-stage German sourdough - produces precisely what Ayurveda has described for centuries as ideal grain preparation. The science was not new. The connection had simply never been made commercially.
That discovery changed the direction. We are no longer a general European bakery. We are India's only commercial bakery practising the 27-hour German three-stage sourdough - applied with a full Ayurvedic framework.
From a warm neighbourhood bakery to India's most mineral-bioavailable bread.
Same Indian Heart. Same German Art.
A more focused mission.
The first oven.
We opened with a small bakery, a few loaves of German sourdough, and the belief that Pune was ready for bread made properly. It was. The neighbourhood responded. We grew.
Bigger space, same street.
A larger bakery. More capacity, a fuller range. The product was good. But the model we were building — retail counter, walk-in traffic, European pastries for every occasion — was quietly pulling us away from what had actually excited us: the bread itself, and the science behind it.
The café experiment.
We opened a café. A proper space, good coffee, a full menu. From the outside it looked like growth. Somewhere in the expansion, the bread — the reason we had started any of this — became secondary. We were running a café that also baked. Not a bakery with a mission.
Back to where we meant to start.
We closed the café. Not a failure — a correction. What we always wanted to build was never a café chain. It was this: India's only bakery practising the 27-hour German three-stage sourdough, applied with a full Ayurvedic framework. The product we always intended to bake — finally given the focus it deserved.