It’s 10am on a Sunday and Connaught Place, one of Delhi’s busiest commercial hubs, has a deserted look. Most of the area’s establishments are just opening, but Natural ice cream parlour, with its ground-to-ceiling glass walls and bright interiors, stands out clearly. The benches inside are already taken and the parking space in front of the parlour is full. The parlour manager says the crowds will keep coming right through till midnight.

It’s been only a few months since Natural opened its doors in Delhi but the Mumbai-based company’s parlour has already been an instant hit with its products conjured up with a mix of milk, sugar and fruits. “We like to call our ice creams artisan. They’re innovative and we don’t add artificial flavours, colours, preservatives or stabilisers,” says Raghunandan Srinivas Kamath, 61, Natural’s founder.

Kamath’s ice cream Odyssey had its beginnings about 40 years ago with a simple question. “If ice cream can have fruit flavours, why can’t it have real fruits instead?” Kamath, a fruit vendor’s son from Mangalore, had wondered.

That thought led to Natural’s launch in 1984 in Mumbai with four staffers and 10 flavours like strawberry, mango and custard apple.

Today, at all Natural parlours you can pick from 150 flavours ranging from litchi and mango to custard apples. Kamath says tender coconut and chikoo are the hotsellers. And every weekend a new flavour’s introduced. On average, Natural’s outlets collectively sell around 10,000kg of ice cream daily. Every morning 500kg of Natural ice cream reaches Delhi from Mumbai and is sent to Natural’s two outlets.

Some exotic fruits on the menu include jackfruit, muskmelon, papaya-pineapple and mulberry. Others like litchi, custard apple, guava and kala jamun are available during winter.

Kamath goes to great lengths to maintain quality and picks only the best ingredients for his ice creams and buys from the most trusted suppliers. Milk comes from Mumbai’s Noble Dairy and only pharma-grade sugar is used. As for the fruit, Kamath says: “Since my childhood, I’ve had great knowledge of fruit. I can identify the exact fruit that should be used for making pulp.”

He sources Alphonso mangoes from Ratnagiri and the Konkan belt, litchi from Muzaffarpur and Darjeeling. Strawberries come from Mahabaleshwar and coconut and jackfruit from the south.

Today Natural is on an expansion spree and has spread its wings into Bangalore, Indore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Pune and Ahmedabad. It has around 90 outlets in cities and towns in Maharashtra alone. Next year, Kamath plans to take Natural to Calcutta, Chandigarh and Chennai. The company’s turnover stands at Rs 90 crore (April 2015) with double-digit growth projected in the coming years.

Global plans too are afoot. “First we’d like to reach out to Sri Lanka, Dubai and Pakistan. We’ll sell through franchisees and local tie-ups. Then we might move towards the US and UK. I’d like my ice cream to be known globally,” says Kamath.

Kamath likes to keep it simple and natural. He was born in Mangalore and moved to Mumbai in 1973 aged 19 to work at his elder brother’s south Indian restaurant. However its ice creams were hot favourites and that’s when Kamath figured out where the future lay.

In 1984, Kamath and his wife Pushpalata decided to start an ice cream company with their savings of Rs 4 lakh. They started out in a 200sqft shop in Juhu Scheme, Mumbai. “Celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha and Hema Malini stayed in the area. I thought they’d draw more crowds,” Kamath laughs. The stars are still coming and today Natural doesn’t advertise but depends on word- of-mouth publicity.

The rest he puts down to hard work. Kamath’s an early riser and visits the company’s only manufacturing unit, a sprawling 25,000sqft space in Kandivali, every day. “From the peeling and cutting of the fruits to converting milk into cream and the packaging, I supervise everything,” he says.

Kamath has kept the prices competitive — all scoops cost Rs 60 while a 500g pack costs Rs 300.

His sons too have joined the business. Elder son, Srinivas Kamath, 30, is director of retail expansion and younger son, Siddhant, 23, takes care of operations and training.

But it’s a tough business. Srinivas says: “Our ice cream’s shelf-life is just 15 days and with only one manufacturing unit, it’s difficult to meet demand.” At times the milk sours and thousands of litres are thrown away and at other times seasonal fruits are hard to procure.

The family isn’t worried about competition or international brands. “Our technique of making ice cream with milk, sugar and fruits, makes it stand out,” Srinivas says. He adds: “People claim they know how to make fruit ice cream but not everyone knows how to get the right balance. My father has a special talent.”

That special talent’s winning fans and taking the Kamath family places.