They chucked up cosy IT jobs at TATA Consultancy services and Wipro because they kind of missed homely food in Bangalore. And they are now ready to global with their eating chain, which has 60 branches spread across four Indian cities. Eight years ago, Pallavi Gupta, 37, and her husband Gaurav Jain, 40, both engineers with MBAs from the institute of management technology, Ghaziabad, set up the first unit of Mast Kalandar not far from their then home at Bangalore’s Bannerghatta Road.

The laminated-top tables and hard back chairs remind you of a college canteen. Customers place orders at the counter, but are served at the tables. The meals are freshly cooked. The name Mast Kalandar loosely translated as ‘merry acrobat’ symbolizes the casual, happy, homely ambience that the eatery aims for. A girl can come alone and eat hear. The ambience is relaxed but contemporary- not ethnic. This is for someone who uses an imac or an iPhone but eat dal-chawal.

Mast Kalandar which has 800 employees has 49 branches in Bangalore and the rest in Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad. Springleaf Retail Pvt ltd, which runs the chain, has raised more than $11 million in venture funding from footprint ventures and hellion venture partners and is looking for a fresh round next quarter. Jain plans to go to the north, and Bombay will be next year. He expects the first overseas branch in less than two years and 350 to 400 outlets in around four years.

Things have come a long way. The founder couple recall early days, when hordes of north Indians like themselves made the southern city their new home- only to notice that apart from rich-food restaurants, there were only the austere Udupi-style ‘darshinis’ that served southern fare like idlis and rice.