7th Heaven, the Indian bakery chain that opened its first UK shop in Reading in September 2025, now puts its UK estate at 13 shops trading, with 13 more in the pipeline and 56 franchise agreements signed. The next wave takes in Cardiff, Liverpool and Bristol.
The UK arm trades as 7th Heaven Foods Limited, incorporated on 7 October 2024, with a registered office in the City of London. Its filed activities cover cake manufacture, bakery retail and takeaway food. The format is a live kitchen: components are prepared in advance, then assembled and decorated in front of the customer. The brand sells that as a cake finished in seven minutes. In India, its own site puts the estate at more than 350 outlets in over 125 cities.
A pipeline of 13 more shops, with 56 agreements signed
The towns lined up for the next wave are High Wycombe, Richmond, Egham, Potters Bar, Liverpool, Pinner, Wokingham, Fleet, Southall, Cardiff, Twickenham and Bristol. The counts on the brand’s own pages do not line up. Its store locator shows 12 shops with published opening hours, then a “launching soon” list of 20 towns which adds Watford, Harrow, Ilford, Biggleswade, Preston and Battersea.
The wave itself is billed as 13 openings, but only 12 towns are named. Network size in UK franchising is always the franchisor’s own count: there is no register of franchise agreements here, and nothing on a company’s filings captures outlet numbers.
What the brand publishes about its franchise offer
The UK franchise page puts the minimum investment at £25,000 and the total at £99,000. It quotes a gross margin of 75% and a profit potential of £10,000 to £40,000 a month. The same page lists training, help finding a site and funding support, says no experience is required, and describes the commitment as “full time or passive”.
It puts the franchisee count at 350 and the year established at 2011, while the group’s other UK site says 2014. These are figures the franchisor publishes about itself, not audited accounts.
What the public record shows, and what it does not
No filed accounts sit behind any of it yet. The company’s first accounts are not due at Companies House until 7 October 2026, so there is no UK turnover figure on the public record.
What the register does show is control. The directors are Arjun, Sanjay, Swati, Karan and Sunita Chugh, all resident in India, with Sultan Salim Sayyed as company secretary, so the UK arm sits with the founding family rather than with a UK master franchisee. Nor is there a sector benchmark to set the offer against: no official UK statistical series breaks out franchised businesses, and no SIC code marks a business out as franchised. The figure usually cited is the BFA’s 2024 National Franchise Survey, which put UK franchising at £19.1 billion across 1,009 systems and 50,421 units.
Good to know
There is no franchise statute in the UK, no register of franchise agreements and no pre-contract disclosure document. Franchising sits under general contract and competition law, so a network’s size and its economics reach the public only in the form the franchisor chooses to publish. That is why they appear here as its own figures.
What the next few months will show
Two dates are fixed. The first UK accounts fall due on 7 October 2026, the first filed record of what the operation turns over and how it is funded. The gap between 56 signed agreements and 13 trading shops is the other number to watch, along with how quickly it closes. The chain was founded in India by Arjun Chugh and his father Sanjay Chugh, with Swati Chugh leading business development. On the company’s own count, the UK network has gone from one shop to 13 inside a year.
