Twelve Cupcakes sold to Indian tea company for S$2.5 million

SINGAPORE — Less than a month after celebrity couple Jaime Teo and Daniel Ong made their divorce public, it is now confirmed that Twelve Cupcakes, the cupcake chain they founded in 2011, has been sold to Kolkata-based Dhunseri Group, one of India’s largest tea producers, for S$2.5 million.

Mr Mrigank Dhanuka, a member of the family that owns the Dhunseri Group, told TODAY: “We have acquired a 100 per cent stake in Twelve Cupcakes. The company, with a presence across 17 malls, helps us establish a strong footprint in the food & beverage (F&B) space in the Singapore market. We are looking at turning the business around, which is at just about cash break-even point at this juncture.”

The sale was completed last December, following the divorce four months earlier of the former beauty queen and the radio deejay. 

The couple made the news of their divorce public on Dec 31 on their respective Instagram accounts. 

They have a six-year-old daughter, Renee, and they both said their focus is on giving her “as normal a childhood as possible”.

“We have no comment on the story for now,” Mr Ong said in his response to TODAY’s queries about the sale of Twelve Cupcakes, which has expanded to more than 40 outlets across six countries in the region. Ms Teo did not respond by press time.

The deal marks Dhunseri Group’s first foray into the F&B space in Singapore and the region. Mr Dhanuka has relocated to Singapore to head the operations locally, with plans to widen his firm’s presence in the F&B scene here. “We will be expanding our F&B portfolio under Twelve Cupcakes with new product launches in Singapore. We are also looking at expanding in the region post this acquisition. We continue to look for value deals here in the confectionery space,” he said.

Dhunseri Group, which has been in the tea business for more than five decades, expanded its holdings to 10 estates in 2012-13 in Assam, from eight estates in 2003-04. The group also has a sizeable presence in the petrochemicals sector in India. 

The Twelve Cupcakes deal comes at a time when the retail industry in Singapore is struggling amid poor consumer sentiment, high costs, labour constraints and, above all, increased competition from e-commerce. The F&B segment has, however, remained largely resilient to the broader retail decline, and malls have increased the F&B share of their tenant mix sharply to attract footfall.