Mint Lounge on 11 August 2012---Survivors from the 1800s to now

www.livemint.com

New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 32 IN DE PE ND EN CE

LOUNGE

DA Y

SP EC IA L

THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

SURVIVORS FROM THE 1800s TO NOW We celebrate small, regional pre­independence companies which braved liberalization and have left an imprint on our local, collective memory

A HISTORIC INNINGS >Page 21

SOUND­CLOUDING CENTURIES In 1884, in a by­lane of Calcutta, the harmonium, as Indian classical music knows it today, was invented.

The sowers of ‘sur’ struggle to keep in tune >Page 10

FIRST EDITION Booksellers to the ladies of the empire, the story of this little Chennai store is also a history of the origins of Indian publishing >Page 11

THE ACCIDENTAL LEGACY In the hills of Solan, in a brewery beyond time, the country’s oldest beer, first malt whisky, and the cult Old Monk rum are still as heady as they were all those years ago >Pages 12­13

Nilgiri’s first store opened on Bangalore’s Brigade Road in 1939.

The store still exists.

THE INK OF DEMOCRACY The Mysore Paints factory, maker of voters’ ink, is today the sole supplier to young, new democracies worldwide >Page 22

T h eMi n t i P a da p p Ne ws , v i e wsa n da n a l y s i sf r o mMi n t ’ sa wa r d wi n n i n gj o u r n a l i s t s .

T h eMi n ta p pf e a t u r e sl i v es t o c kq u o t e s , b r e a k i n gn e ws , v i d e o r e p o r t sa n ds l i d e s h o wsb a c k e du pwi t hc o mme n t a r yt oh e l py o u ma k es e n s eo f t h ewo r l do f b u s i n e s sa n df i n a n c e .

Pr e s e nt e dby

HOME PAGE L3

LOUNGE First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

Little India

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE BRANDS JASJEET PLAHA/HINDUSTAN TIMES

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT SUNDEEP KHANNA ©2012 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

J

ewellery. Dried mango. Four poster bed. Bedcovers. Razais. Pickle.

Plates. Lamps. Avocado Bodywash.

Rose Soap. Lemon hand cream. Chai masala. Cinnamon sugar. Almond Body Oil. Cake Table. Upholstery.

Spices. Mirrors. Placemats. Toddler Jammies. When I polled people about their favourite Fabindia product almost everybody picked something different (only best-sellers furniture and kurtas featured more than once). Not surprising considering these days Fabindia sells some 250,000 different products!

Earlier this year, a Wipro group company paid `125 crore for a 7% stake in Fabindia. This was after L Capital, the private equity arm of luxury Godzilla LVMH, bought an 8% stake. Lefties may fret that their homespun kurtas are part French establishment now, but it’s been quite a journey for a company that began as a home furSUPER SIX nishings exporter in the 1960s after its founder visited India to give the All India Handicrafts Board and Cottage Industries a lesson in handloom marketing.

Sanjay Gujral, regional managing director of L Capital, says they invested for several reasons: You can easily identify a product from Fabindia; it manages to make traditional techniques contemporary; it appeals to customers across the socio-economic spectrum; and it marries social good with commerce. “There are not many parallels of this,” he says.

I’m not a big fan of nostalgia (except when it comes to the Golden Age of Hindi film music, of course). So while this brilliant issue is about brands that might cause you to sob buckets of happy, sepia-toned tears, it also seems like a good time to think about newer

Small wonder: A Mahindra Reva at the Auto Expo 2012, New Delhi. brands, many of which were created in a liberalized country that would eventually morph into a New India built on the foundations of 250,000 sq. ft malls.

There’s a bunch of cool Indian brands that were born after me (and even after my substantially younger colleagues) but I’m going to pick just a few. My favourite beauty brand Forest Essentials was founded in 2000 by Ayurveda-obsessed Mira Kulkarni. We got our first look at my favourite car, the Reva EV, in 2001. Its creator Chetan Maini is a six-footer who loves to build remote-controlled cars and aeroplanes. My favourite beer, the Danny Denzongpa-owned Dansberg, was first brewed in the mid-1980s. My favourite newspaper Mint was first published in 2007, but you know that story.

One of my first interviews as a business reporter in the early 1990s was with Bhaskar Bhat (then marketing head, now managing director, clearly a one-company man) of Titan Industries. The firm was launched in 1987 for a generation that was ready for life after HMT. My Partition-impacted grand-

mother’s first by-cheque jewellery purchase was from Titan’s jewellery brand Tanishq, a wedding gift to me in 1998.

Lounge Watchman Sidin Vadukut says Titan’s success secret is simply this: They have great design because they hire (and retain) some of the country’s best industrial designers; they have a world-class manufacturing INDEPENDENCE base just outside Bangalore; they don’t DAY compromise on quality; and they offer SPECIAL excellent value for any type of watch you want from blingy to plasticky.

While my house, like yours, is scattered with numerous Fabindia products, when it comes to clothes and kurtas my favourite brand has got to be Anokhi. It’s the only clothing brand I can buy without heading for the trial room and without worrying about how I will launder it.

I love their monthly garment collections, known in-house as “stories”, and their increasing obsession with organic cotton. Of course, Babyjaan is already a fan of their kiddie kurta-pajamas.

What’s your favourite Indian brand?

Write to me at lounge@livemint.com

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

O

n the table at Mumbai’s Parsi dairy farm is the last glass bottle, the kind the firm used to distribute milk in Bombay from 1916. Regulations have since turned glass to plastic. The family has split, and with it, operations. We didn’t recount their story for a lack of detail. But it brought us the realization that India has been built like this: by ordinary people to whom their work has never seemed momentous.

It is a pattern that repeats. Companies that have been around for nearly 100 years have not written books about their glorious past. The great task of nation-building has often been credited to our conglomerates. They are deliberately not our focus in this Independence Day issue. Dwijendra Tripathi notes in his The Oxford History of Indian Business that out of 57 of the largest groups in 1939, only 19 were Indian. Postindependence protectionism proved a boost to many of the companies that exist today. But before that too our everyday needs were met by many small Indian brands. From Pheneol to Royal Enfield, we left out favourites for reasons ranging from duplicating a retail category to a pre-1947 date cut-off.

The issue was sparked by Mint editor R. Sukumar’s memory of a childhood soda: Kalimark (page 20). Pavitra Jayaraman’s INDEPENDENCE DAY journey tracesINDEPENDENCE that of our democracy INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL DAY (page 11) tells (page 22). Higginbotham’s DAY SPECIAL of theSPECIAL influence of the Suez Canal. Anil Padmanabhan served time in a 150-year-old brewery that won’t budge (pages 12-13).

How do these brands have the power to move us so?

Each stitches us to the idea of home. It lies in the name of a store stamped in your grandfather’s books, in the suit your natty armywallah uncle wore, in the biscuit you went to buy holding your father’s finger: a deeply personal history that we share at poignant intersections.

If we stand on the shoulders of giants, then these are the shoulders giants among us have stood on.

Gayatri Jayaraman Issue editor

INDEPENDENCE ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY: ACTIS DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENC DAY SPECIALt

L4

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

ESSAY I SUBROTO CHATTOPADHYAY

Brand old days INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDIA AND OUR MEMORIES OF IT ARE COLOURED BY SOME TIMELESS BRANDS, SUCH AS AIR, HMV, IODEX AND DALDA INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

S

ur na saje kya gaaun main,” sang the maestro and gentleman, the legendary Manna Dey, when he once handed me his visiting card. It read: “Manna Dey, HMV Artist”.

Such was the power of the brand HMV in India.

The Gramophone Co. of India set up operations in Calcutta in 1901 as the first overseas branch of EMI (Electrical & Musical Industries Ltd), London. Nipper the dog, a fox terrier listening to a gramophone, inspired Francis Barraud to do a painting for the Gramophone Co., which was later integrated with His Master’s Voice to create one of the world’s favourite trademarks.

Its landmark studio is in Dum Dum, in what was once a Royal Air Force infirmary. The earliest recording, dated 2 November 1902, is of Gauhar Jaan, an Armenian, singing in raga Jogiya. Since there was no way to identify the singer, Jan mentions her name at the end of the recording, an early manner of establishing copyright.

From Rabindranath Tagore to Noor Jehan, Kundan Lal Saigal and Raichand Boral, every great musician and singer graced HMV’s studios and voice boxes all over the country.

The studio created an environment to attract talent that made HMV a destination music brand. It has over 12,000 hours of music content.

Interestingly, Jawaharlal Nehru’s August 1947 Tryst with Destiny speech was recorded by HMV. If you listen carefully to the recording, you can hear the gentle swish of a fan placed above Panditji.

Kate Wilson, a patent lawyer from New Zealand, says, “Patents expire, copyrights run their course, but brands endure the passage of time.” Often, we consider consumer goods to have the pole position when it comes to brands, but there are great examples of brands in other categories that predate 1947. The story of Indian brands since independence is one of radically changing times and quiet endurance.

With the birth of a new country came many brands designed to cater to the indigenous needs of an emerging nation. Indian film was one such new space. Many brands were born in 1947, but Rajshri Productions, in particular, was born on 15 August 1947.

From Tarachand Barjatya to

Sooraj Barjatya, Rajshri scripted a journey from distribution to the production of some of our greatest hits, like Dosti and Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! Prabhat Film Co. in Pune and Kolhapur and B.N. Sircar’s New Theatres in Calcutta go back to 1929 and 1931, respectively. Dalsukh Pancholi’s Pancholi Studios of Lahore, AVM Productions and the Gemini Studios set up by S.S. Vasan in 1940 in Madras (now Chennai), all added up to quite a vibrant cast, alongside scriptwriters, lyricists, composers, cinematographers, technicians, singers, stars and directors.

Though understated in their presence, Warner Bros have been in India since the 1920s, and Blaise Fernandes, country manager and managing director, Warner Bros, continues to bring the best of their movies out of his office in Eros building in Mumbai.

I believe these were formidable brands in formidable times, simply because as they catered to new demands they began to be run like corporate firms.

AIR (All India Radio) too is a kilo-class brand. In 1947 it had six stations, now it has 277. It adopted its name Akashvani from a local private radio station in Mysore started by M.V. Gopalaswamy. Its first broadcast was in Pashto.

In 1946, Tata Airlines went public and became Air-India. In a galaxy of boutique brands, Air-India delivered an outstanding and unique consumer experience. In 1947, it was one of India’s first global brands and a superb one at that. The Maharajah, the Centaur logo, the ticket offices, the destinations, the brochures, ticket jackets, the billboards, the in-flight magazine, the people, their commitment, the food, the service and the joy of flying on the magic carpet where the cockpit and in-flight crew treated guests like royalty...

They just got it right over and over again. The wonderful advertising

by Thompson under the hawk eye of the legendary Bobby Kooka of Air-India just reinforced it (I refer to 1947, not 2012!).

Jaiwant Paul read economics at St Stephen’s College, played cricket for the University of Delhi and was the first Indian management trainee recruited by Hindustan Lever in 1949. His notes, neatly handwritten during his factory training stint in Ghaziabad,

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

COURTESY

COURTESY CUTTINGTHECHAI.COM

COURTESY COMIC­GUY.BLOGSPOT.IN

Flashback: (clockwise from above) Dalda, Air­India and HMV are Indian brands that have stayed on in our consciousness, and con­ tinue to be in business.

Uttar Pradesh, and Shamnagar in West Bengal, where Levers manufactured its main product Dalda, a Dutch brand reliveried for India, describe how the product was manufactured. It was then mandatory for a marketing trainee to know the ingredients and production process before he learnt how to market and sell it. When hydrogenated vegetable oil was to replace milk-based desi ghee, the move was from fats based on lactose to lipids. Levers was introducing a cooking medium that could be mass-produced in factories, and it had a significant margarine business in Europe. At the time it was an important addition to the marketplace since India

was milk-deficient and edible oils were essential.

Cyclostyled copies of the sales and promotion manuals of the time can be found in neat files in the Jorhat, Assam, distributor’s shop. They detail how demonstration carts would be set up outside the halwai (sweet) shops, with stove, kadai (wok) and ingredients to make puris and samosas, all to be cooked in Dalda in the presence of a crowd and then fed to them hot off the fire. The manual came with recipe books by master chefs of the time like Thangam Philip. In Raj and Co., there are old black and white pictures of Amar Chand Dhir, the Levers and ITC distributor in Jorhat, wearing ghungroos and dancing around the cart to get people to try freshly fried samosas cooked in Dalda.

It wasn’t only nifty advertising and smart media buying that created brands like these, there was a detailed, integrated programme which included a

robust go-to market and a strong trial-inducing activity. It was also all personal, and uniquely Indian.

There was variety and the supply chain was long but smooth. Children were given Waterbury’s Compound (made

by Lambert Pharmacal Co. Ltd in New Zealand) and Farex, which came from Glaxo New Zealand. Lifebuoy, Pears, Lux and Rexona sold alongside Sunlight Soap laundry wash.

Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, the maharaja of Mysore, established the Government Soap Factory in Bangalore in 1916. It started manufacturing soaps under the brand name Mysore Sandal Soap, using sandalwood oil as the main ingredient. A factory to distil sandalwood oil from the wood was set up in Mysore in the same year. The brand continues to have a strong franchise.

Kolynos toothpaste gave Colgate a reasonable fight and the latter sold tooth powder in tins to introduce contemporary oral care to new consumers. Women used Vaseline, Hazeline Snow, Afghan Snow and Charmis cream in winter with Cuticura or Himalaya Bouquet talcum powder. Max Factor and Old Spice were available, and for men who sported the Clark Gable look, there was Brylcreem.

And around the country, stores carried Simco wax for the local Sikh gentry, and for those who shaved themselves instead of going to the nai (barber), there were Erasmic blades.

Lipton Green Label was a much cherished premium tea brand and then there was Brooke Bond Red Label, with a wonderful line: “All good mornings start with Red Label.” Marketers were consummate artistes who knew how to infuse romance into tea.

They tapped into the speciality of the tea gardens, the weather, and the care they took to fill your teacup with joy as they built brands.

There were, of course, Duck-

8ATE.BLOGSPOT.IN

back raincoats and Bengal Potteries for your china. India was a market open to global products; cars like Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, Sunbeam Talbots and Studebakers were on the roads.

Then there were regionally strong brands. Madras hosted some great brands. The tradition of reading the The Hindu (first published in 1878); drinking Narasu’s filter coffee (Sri Narasu Coffee Co. was established in 1926 in Johnsonpet Salem), and serving Horlicks in steel tumblers. Chennai continues to be one of the largest Horlicks markets in the world. Add to this brands like Parrys and Binnys from the Buckingham Carnatic Mills, Chennai’s special bookshop that continues—Higginbotham’s—and the Spencer’s International Hotels, in Connemara, West End and Savoy.

Bombay boasted of The Taj Mahal Hotel (now The Taj Mahal Palace hotel) and Duke and Sons, which had bottled great fruit juices and soft drinks since 1899— their lemonade, Mangola and ginger ale are to die for even today.

Calcutta had its movie halls Metro Cinema and New Empire, restaurants like Firpos, canned sweets from KC Das, and Delhi its marquee brand Rooh Afza.

Finally, in these painful times, there is a brand which has been with us since the republic was formed: Iodex. The tag line continues to be relevant and an inspirational rallying cry every morning, “Iodex maliye, kaam pe chaliye (Apply Iodex, get to work)”. It would be useful to stock up for the next 65 years, we might need it.

Subroto Chattopadhyay is chairman of The Peninsula Foundation, where he incubates start-ups.

He has worked with Brooke Bond, ITC and Pepsico South Asia, where he was an executive director. He is the former chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulation and the Indian Music Industry.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L5

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

In the words of the daughter­in­law IN ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S OLDEST BUSINESS FAMILIES, SOME VALUES RUN THROUGH GENERATIONS

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

THE GOOD LIFE SHOBA NARAYAN

M

y father-in-law was 74 when I entered the TVS family as a young bride of 17,” says Prema Srinivasan with a laugh. “You can imagine how it was.”

We are at her spacious minimalist home in the Boat Club area of Chennai, right beside the White Elephant that is Dayanidhi Maran’s home. In her citrus yellow woven cotton sari and trademark sandal paste dot on her forehead, Srinivasan looks ageless. When I ask her age, she demurs.

The wife of the youngest son of T.V. Sundaram Iyengar, whose early entrepreneurship has spawned a sprawling family conglomerate, Srinivasan is reminiscing about what it means to be the daughter-in-law of one of Tamil Nadu’s—and arguably south India’s—most iconic business families.

“My father-in-law was an extraordinary character,” she says. “A man of few words and one who valued quality and punctuality above all.”

This discernment has percolated down to Srinivasan. I first met her in New York over 10 years ago. She came for a few months to study cultural anthropology at Columbia, and art history at Parsons and The New School.

I tried securing an apartment for her, but the Fifth Avenue apartment she found—on her own and in two days— was far better. We visited each other.

Once, I took her shopping at Bergdorf’s, where she bought French aroma candles and well-chosen accessories. Then we lost touch.

Just before this Independence Day issue, I reached out to her through her son, Gopal, and asked if she would talk about the “TVS brand”. Reluctantly, she agreed. So here we are at her home, talking over fresh juice. The staff, clad in white, hovers nearby as she talks about growing up in the Mylapore area of Chennai and volunteering for the freedom movement as a girl of 13.

Srinivasan comes from a family of scholars and professionals and when she got married, she was taken in and “spoilt” by her mother-in-law, Lakshmi, a woman of simple tastes, who always wore khadi and cotton saris.

“We were never given diamonds or silks and there was no glamour or personal amassment of wealth,” says Srinivasan. “Now all that has changed with spouses coming in from different parts.” Both her in-laws had just six sets of clothes which they would use and give away before acquiring the next set. Today, she says: “We all have closets and closets of things that we rarely use. But all this happened only after I moved to Madras.”

The few luxuries that the family enjoyed in the early days were fresh fruits and vegetables and a personal dhobi (washerman). “My father-in-law used to say, ‘Vaithiyannu kudukarathukku bathila vanniyannukku kodu (Instead of giving money to the doctor, give it to the fruit merchant)’, so we always took care of what we ate. And cleanliness was very important.”

Although the family hailed from a small village in Tirunelveli, the T in TVS stands for Trichur, where Sundaram Iyengar grew up.

He tried being a lawyer and worked in government jobs before striking out on his own. He established a bus service in Madurai called Southern Roadways Ltd and this was the genesis for the group.

Before independence, says Srinivasan, a lot of bullock carts would ply the routes that the TVS buses ran on. Nails from the bullocks’ shoes would pop and puncture the tyres. Annoyed by the delays this caused for his buses, Sundaram Iyengar devised INDEPENDENCE a magnetic road roller that would be pulledDAY on the SPECIAL roads to pick up the horse and bullock shoes and any other metal part that could puncture his tyres. “Everyone used to wonder why he was going to such an extent to prevent punctures but he said that it helped keep his buses on time. At that time, TVS was called ‘Thalla Vendam Sir (No need to push, Sir)’.”

Sundaram Iyengar put all his children on the shop floor, where they had to work on everything from engineering to auto parts. “My husband was quite a genius who could put anything together with his hands,” says Srinivasan. “He created an idli-motor for the company canteen and was fascinated with cars.”

It was the marriage of her eldest sister-in-law, Dr Soundaram, that, in a way, catapulted the family directly into the freedom struggle. “Soundaramma was bright and beautiful when she got married at 8. My father-in-law married her to his own nephew, Soundararajan, who he loved more than his sons,” says Srinivasan.

When the plague broke out, Soundararajan, a medical doctor, worked with the sick, and lost his life in the process. Before he died, he encouraged his young wife to continue his work. And so, Soundaram went from Madurai to Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi—a radical act at that time—got a medical degree and went to work with Mahatma Gandhi. It was during this time that she met A. Ramachandran, who would later become her spouse. “Gandhiji encouraged them to marry and Soundaramma wore a khadi sari handmade by Kasturba for her wedding.

In 1947, she began Gandhigram Trust in Tamil Nadu and all the freedom fighters of the time used to visit,” says Srinivasan. “She was one of the greatest souls I have ever met. She really served the nation.” In 2005, the Tamil Nadu government released a postage stamp in Dr Soundaram’s honour.

Srinivasan’s interests lie in the arts.

She has made friends all over India and the world, who come to see her. She keeps an open house on Diwali and some of the extended TVS family still drops in to visit. When I ask if she is the matriarch of the family, she says, “No, in fact, I don’t even exist for the younger generation.”

Growing up in Chennai, it is hard to escape the TVS family. Bangalore, where I now live, is different. The city’s millionaires come from the new fields of

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

Family album: The TVS clan in Madurai in 1960; and (below) Sundaram Iyengar, his wife and three of their children in 1957.

IT. I’ve often wondered what it is like to be part of an old wealthy family such as TVS, Godrej or the Tatas? Is it a strong foundation from which you can fly or an anchor that weighs you down? Large business clans often become selfreferential, keeping tabs on each other but oblivious of the wider social milieu.

Such criticism has dogged the TVS clan as well with its members populating

each other’s boards and foundations.

As I leave, I ask about a relatively new member of the TVS family—one from my hometown. “Oh, Rohan (Murthy) is a lovely boy,” she says with a broad smile. He is very hard-working and highly principled.”

And then she gives perhaps the highest accolade a grandmother can give. “Rohan reminds me

of my husband.”

Shoba Narayan has met Dr Soundaram—on a postage stamp. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

L6

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

ARMÉMUSEUM (THE SWEDISH ARMY MUSEUM)/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Indian Army’s .303 story INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL GUN TO LOOK AT. WITH ITS WOODEN STURDINESS, IT HAS A DIGNITY THAT MANY MODERN GUNS, LIKE THE PLASTIC M16, DO NOT Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield was the manufacturer.

Rudyard Kipling sent this gun into legend in his poem The Grave of the Hundred Head:

REPLY TO ALL AAKAR PATEL

T

he most interesting of all the mercenary soldiers of India in the 1700s were the Naga sadhus. They were ferocious, utterly reckless and totally naked.

Their leader in the war of the Awadh Shias against the Mughals was Rajendragiri Gosain. During the siege of Delhi in 1753 the monk had the back of his head blown away by an idiot who fired from his own side. A historian said, “I ascribe it to the bad marksmanship and reckless firing for which Indian troops were notorious.”

In the hands of Indians, guns were dangerous.

Exactly 100 years after Gosain’s death, the British introduced the rifle that would cause India to mutiny against them: the Enfield Pattern 1853 with its waxed cartridge. In the hands of Indians, even ammunition was now dangerous. Naturally, the Pattern 53 did not last long, and soon went through an evolution, the Snider-Enfield of 1860.

Jacob Snider was the inventor of the gun’s mechanism and the

Gallipoli. The rifle with which Pakistanis because they were accurate at distance. When Lawrence of Arabia captured better and more accurate than Afghans got the Kalashnikov in Aqaba. It is the rifle that cut their own guns. the 1980s, many warriors kept down the Sikhs at JallianwalaINDEPENDENCE The greater beauty of the .303, their old rifles. The New York INDEPENDENCE DAY in 1919 and the Dalits at DAYhowever, came from its being Bagh Times carried a feature on arms INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL Ghatkopar’s Ramabai Ambedkar reliable and brutally effective. DAY captured in Afghanistan A Snider squibbed in the Nagar in 1997.

In The Rifle Story, John Walter SPECIAL including one WW-II .303 that jungle, It is the rifle of Mumbai police writes that an experiment in was patched up but still working.

Somebody laughed and fled, and of the Afghan resistance. I 1900 showed that the .303’s The .303 had some great And the men of the First find the .303 a beautiful gun to range was effectively 1.8km. innovations. The first came from Shikaris look at. With its wooden This is why, for a century, its mechanism, invented by Picked up their Subaltern sturdiness, it has a dignity that Afghans have held on to this James Paris Lee. It could reload dead, many modern guns, like the gun of their fathers. quickly and trained infantrymen With a big blue mark in his plastic M16, do not.

The gun they’ve sniped could let off 20 rounds in 1 forehead The Indian Army’s standard Britishers with, Russians with, minute with great accuracy.

And the back blown out of issue Insas is possibly the ugliest and now Americans with.

The rifle’s full name is the his head. gun in existence. Gurkhas The quick-firing AK-47 is SMLE. The LE obviously stands interviewed after they went over useful when overrunning for Lee-Enfield. S is for short The poem is about how the top at Kargil said they picked trenches (which is why it’s an but the .303 is short only by Subadar Prag Tewarri avenges a up the Kalashnikovs of the fallen “assault” rifle). But it is not 19th century rifle standards.

SHOOTING.COM.AU fallen English officer in Burma.

Modern police forces around By now, the Indian jawan had the world carry assault rifles improved his aim and had been (like the AK series) or still drilled and disciplined into one smaller submachine guns (such of the world’s great infantrymen. as the Uzi).

The next version of the Enfield These are compact and easier rifle was a weapon fit for his to fire in restricted urban spaces qualities, the Lee-Enfield .303 and indoors. The .303 is a rifle SMLE. With this gun and British from the era of trench warfare, drilling and training, the Indian and infantry arrayed in battle infantryman was no longer lines. It is not an urban weapon. dangerous but deadly.

The M stands for magazine, The .303 was manufactured in and this was the second Enfield, north London. Discovery great innovation.

Channel’s experts named it the The .303 carries 10 rounds third best rifle of all time (behind and was the most capacious the AK-47 and the American rifle of its time. Germans facing M16). But actually it is No. 1. It British and Indian troops has probably killed more men armed with the new .303 often than any weapon in history. reported that they had faced With his .303, the British machine-gun fire. This training infantryman pacified the Boers and disciplining under British and defeated the Germans to officers, I repeat myself, is win two world wars. It is the rifle what produced the modern that the Anzac troops fired as Indian army. they were slaughtered by The massacre of Mumbai Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at happened with the Pakistanis

firing their AKs from the hip and the Mumbai constables firing back with their .303s.

Why didn’t they hit anything?

If I remember the videos from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus correctly, one constable fired with the rifle’s stock loosely under his armpit instead of on the shoulder. This guaranteed that the .303’s kick would send the bullet over the Pakistani’s head. The generations of training in firing the .303 Indians have received has totally worn off.

We’ve also stopped making the gun. It used to be made at the Rifle Factory Ishapore in West Bengal. But it doesn’t make them any more and doesn’t need to.

Rifles become inaccurate and unusable with time when their rifling (the spiral groove in the barrel from which the weapons get their name) is worn out from shooting.

There’s no chance of that happening in India, which has no budget to spare for target practice.

And so the .303 will be around for another century, even if not in the hands of our constabulary.

Aakar Patel is a writer and a columnist.

Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/aakar­patel INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP

Gun power: (from top) The Lee­ Enfield .303 SMLE; it was the chosen weapon of the British Commonwealth military forces; and policemen in Mumbai with their .303 guns after the attack on The Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

L7

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

CAMLIN’S INK, PAINTS AND PENCILS, FIRST MADE AS ‘SWADESHI’ PRODUCTS IN BRITISH INDIA, HAVE TOLD THE STORY OF A NATION IN FLUX

Colouring the map B Y S UPRIYA N AIR

Camlin

1931

INDEPENDENCE DAY TYPE SPECIALt

OF

rettes. In his book Oontavarchaa tificates from the All India INDEPENDENCE COMPANY supriya.n@livemint.com Pravaas (Travels With the Camel Colour Contest. Camlin INDEPENDENCE DAY Listed ···························· DAY he explains the idea that is now one of the leading lights Camel), SPECIAL SPECIAL from this sight. A camel, n 1930s Mumbai, D.P. Dansprang of India’s `10,000-crore stationdekar and G.P. Dandekar, storing essential nourishment in ery market.

KEY PRODUCTS proprietors of Dandekar & its hump, can run for miles Yet, when it began in 1931, the Office and school Co., had just begun selling ink across the desert. What was the Camlin story was the size of a stationery, art materials and ink powders under the ideal fountain pen but a camel? bucket. “Not exactly a bucket,” Horse Brand moniker, but found “Once you store ink in it,” says says Dilip, “but a small vessel their family unenthusiastic about Dilip Dandekar, D.P. Dandekar’s not much bigger than that.” D.P. WHERE TO BUY the name when branching out son and chairman and managing Dandekar had left his governRetailers around the into the fountain pens business. director of Kokuyo Camlin, “you ment job in search of a start-up. country What could they do? They can write for miles.” So the Having realized that quality staneeded something easy to proCamel brand came to be. To tionery products in India were SUCCESS nounce and write in every Indian associate the animal with its almost entirely imported from language. It had to be distinctive drink of choice, the word Camthe UK, Germany or Japan, the MANTRA but neutral, associated neither INDEPENDENCE lin, a catchy combination of INDEPENDENCE Dandekar brothers decided that Working closely with DAY with the family name nor reli“camel” and “ink”, was coined. DAYtheir business would be in the INDEPENDENCE consumers and retailers SPECIAL gious affiliations of any kind.

The story of middle-class SPECIAL stationery line. And so, in their DAY D.P. Dandekar, sitting in an education in the country is writ- family home in Girgaum, they SPECIAL Irani café with a friend, drinking ten in Flora pencils and Scholar were given one room in which to tea, found his eye drawn to an geometry sets. This reporter has manufacture their product. The Jammu (where they set up busiadvertisement for Camel cigaseveral “participation prize” cer- first ink was made in a small vat, ness 30 years ago; wood for then distributed and tested in Camlin’s wood-case pencils ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT nearby schools. Adhesive and came from the Kashmir Valley). paste gum followed, and then “But real growth started,” says fountain pens—a departure from Dilip, “when we started making the old system of inkwells in colours.” Dilip’s elder brother school desks.

Subhash, currently chairman “All of this was from 1931 to emeritus of Camlin, inherited about 1947 or 1948,” Dilip says. their father’s love of chemistry, Very quickly, the Dandekars and decided to diversify the made a name for themselves business. Camlin’s art supplies among Maharashtrian and business, which includes waterGujarati businessmen in the erst- colours, crayons, oil pastels and while Bombay Presidency. Space poster colours, thrives today. A quickly became a constraint, and 2010 Aditya Birla Money report the family moved to Shivaji Park. states that it is a market leader in By the 1950s, manufacturing had the art materials product catemoved into the suburban wilds gory. The company reported a of Andheri. Camlin’s current turnover of `397 crore for the head offices are located in Andfinancial year 2011-12. heri (East), but they have multiCamlin focused on building ple factories in Maharashtra and their brand from shop to shop:

I

Drawing board: Dilip Dandekar, chairman and managing director, Kokuyo Camlin.

FOUNDERS G.P. Dandekar and D.P. Dandekar

In the black: Camel ink and watercol­ ours; and (extreme left) an old adver­ tisement for Camlin art products.

Their packaging, they recognized, would have to be on a par with anything the world could offer. Meanwhile, students would remember them for things like the Camel colour contest, which turns 40 next year. Last year, the contest entered the Guinness World Records for receiving 4.8 million entries—the largest number ever recorded in an art competition.

“When liberalization happened,” says Dilip, “we were equipped to fight with foreign products. Many Indian companies failed because they never changed their mindset.”

The future has not left Camlin untouched. In 2011, the company entered a joint venture with Kokuyo, the Japanese stationery giant, which acquired a controlling stake in the company. What was once Dandekar & Co. underwent yet another transformation, from Camlin Ltd to Kokuyo Camlin Ltd. All the beloved old product names remain, at hand for succeeding generations. But who will use Camel ink in future?

Dilip is sanguine. The market is not growing, but as long as children are compelled to use fountain pens in school—and this is still true of most major states in the country—it will stay steady.

Meanwhile, the future belongs, once again, to geeks.

Once they dreamed of ink tablets: Who is to say what they will make tomorrow?

L8

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

TO GENERATIONS, A DUCKBACK RAINCOAT OR SCHOOL BAG DEFINED THE BACK­TO­SCHOOL ETHOS. NOW, A POOL OF LOYALISTS IS KEEPING THE FIRM FROM GOING UNDER

Swim or sink INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

B Y S HAMIK B AG The company, which has been of corporate living in Bengal. The ····························· facing acute financial difficulties room’s Burma teak walls, the FOUNDER ne of the old Duckback since rubber prices shot up from cupboards full of vintage crockery Surendra Mohan Bose catalogues has this `55 eight years back to `280 per and artefacts, the brochure with advisory for customers on INDEPENDENCE kg around 2009-10, was its illustrations of EuropeanINDEPENDENCE DAY DAYlooking men in Burbanks,INDEPENDENCE getting the best service from sanctioned a corporate debt a long TYPE OF COMPANY SPECIAL raincoats: “After the rainy season, restructuring (CDR) package by SPECIAL Duckback trench coat, cavaliers DAY Pvt. Ltd apply some French chalk to the the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) wearing berets and pulling away SPECIAL rubber side of the coat and keep in March. According to author at pipes, indicate an old order.

KEY PRODUCTS it hanging in a cool dry place.”

Amit Bhattacharyya’s second Bengal Waterproof, though, Rubberized children’s and French chalk? Even Nilufer volume of Swadeshi Enterprise in was borne out of a swadeshi Bose-Archment, a senior official Bengal: 1921-1947, sales in 1941 (nationalistic) mindset towards speciality rainwear, ice bags, of the company, looks perplexed, totalled `40.42 lakh. This figure business. Founder Surendra air pillows, hot­water bottles her raised eyebrows and increased to `60.05 lakh in 1960 Mohan Bose, states author upturned lips professing a certain and `1.18 crore in 1967. Figures Bhattacharyya in Swadeshi WHERE TO BUY helplessness about such things. for later years are unavailable.

Enterprise, was not just a Showrooms in Kolkata, Then there are the Waterproof According to Arup Sen, company swadeshi entrepreneur like many “Railway” Holdalls, Dak Bags for director, their annual turnover others at the time, he was also a Mumbai and 1,000 dealers postal officers, Nor’Wester caps, since the mid-1990s has political opponent of the British. across India Overshoes, which were worn by remained more or less in the While in prison in Uttar Pradesh’s fine gents over their shoes, range of `50-60 crore.

Hamirpur for anti-state activities SUCCESS Rubber Heels for both ladies and With the CDR package in during World War I, he became MANTRA men, Cyclists’ Caps, Racket place, Sen says, Duckback is aware of the perilous working Cases, Gun Covers, Wellingtons poised for a comeback. “The plan conditions of Indian soldiers, who Maintain tradition, and contraceptives—and what is to raise production and expand didn’t have proper rainproof gear. innovate the catalogue really does is tell our retail business with more “Many Indian soldiers died you that Duckback, back in the Duckback exclusive stores and because of lack of groundsheets, days before independence, had franchises. We also need to raincoats or boots. S.M. Bose, spread its net wide even as a advertise for the younger who had studied at the Berkeley product, that kept Duckback portion of its product range had generation of customer who and Stanford universities in the ahead of the competition. been outrun by time. “We even might not be as aware of the US, had an interest in catering to That, by all reckoning, is the had waterproof covers for brand as their parents,” he says. the military but the initial best bet when the brand seeks a horses,” says Bose-Archment.

In earlier decades, school life objective was triggered by revival in the liberalized Founded in 1920 in Kolkata as in Kolkata and other cities nationalism,” says Arati Hosali marketplace; a carry-over of Bengal Waterproof Works (now wouldn’t have been complete (nee Bose), an elderly member of production values from the preBengal Waterproof Ltd), India’s without a Duckback bag and the family. independence era when first waterproofing factory which raincoat, or a family vacation After his release from prison, Duckback advertised itself as produced the Duckback brand of without the company’s holdall Bose, along with his brothers “Entirely Indian—Indian capital, rainwear, the company is now at and air pillow. These customers, Jogindra Mohan, Ajit Mohan and Indian labour, Indian materials a tipping point, says Bosenow parents, are likely to be Bishnupada, went on to form the and Indian brain”.

Archment. The old guard that Duckback loyalists. company, backed by a unique “It is true that we have not held on tightly to the reins of the Duckback’s ability to endure manufacturing methodology been able to keep pace with postfamily-run business, especially till replaced by a trendier option which came to be known as the liberalization India, when the Bose-Archment’s late uncle has also been its failing—an Duckback process. country grew at 8% every year.

Debabrata Bose, widely respected inability to reinvent, move from Like cola formulations, BoseWhile the Indian consumer for his professionalism, have died the holdall to the rucksack, one Archment remains tight-lipped market grew by geometric or are no longer active. Some generation to the other. about the Duckback process. She progression, Duckback grew by reports hint at labour-related In the drawing room of the acknowledges, though, that it is arithmetic progression and has trouble at the company’s century-old Bose family home in this innovation in manufacturing, been conservative,” says Sen. Panihati factory, on the south Kolkata’s Nazar Ali Lane, the secret mix behind the Duckback is still a good brand outskirts of Kolkata. one is drawn in to a different era durability and goodwill of the name, contends Arabinda Ray, an

Duckback

O

1920

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

Weather­proof: (extreme left) A page from an old product catalogue; and two of Duck­ back’s newer line of products.

author and expert on corporate life, especially in Kolkata. His certification is not unqualified though. “The market for raincoats has dwindled a lot. People also use cheap raincoats for shorttime usage.” Children, traditional Duckback rainwear users, travel by school buses where earlier they walked or used public transport, adds Ray. Even though the company has ceded ground in the mass consumer space, it has found steady orders coming in from the defence establishment. For, unknown to many, the company has kept up its production of rubberized inflatable boats, Gsuits for pilots, submarine escape suits and life jackets. But the time has come, Sen adds, for the company to regain growth in all sectors. Both Sen and BoseArchment are new to the 92-yearold company. Both seem enthused and circumspect about the future.

After spending 20 years in the US, Bose-Archment returned to take charge of the export wing of the company a few years back.

She speaks earnestly about the need to advertise Duckback as an “ecologically friendly” product which does not disintegrate easily, unlike the PVC-based products of competitors in the rainwear market, which “leach chemicals to your skin”.

Possibly, there is a realization that Duckback’s swadeshi line of promotion, used during the British period, may not hold water in the globalized mall space in India—and that only new initiatives and ideas can bring Duckback back from the depths of market nostalgia.

Write to lounge@livemint.com INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

Rain check: (extreme left) The Duckback trenchcoat from a vintage catalogue; and an exclusive Duckback showroom in Kolkata.

L9

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

Growth story: (left) By the 1970s, Nilgiri’s had bought out its neighbour The Old Bull and Bush bar; Muth­ uswami Mudaliar and his wife Ramayi Ammal.

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

COURTESY ACTIS

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

HOW IS A CUSTOMER AFFECTED WHEN A FOUR­GENERATION­OLD FAMILY BUSINESS IS SOLD TO A PROFESSIONAL INVESTOR? INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

Beyond bread and butter B Y P RIYA R AMANI

1905

Nilgiri’s

priya.r@livemint.com

Then, now: (right) The Nilgiri’s store on Ulsoor Road, Bangalore; and Ramachandran’s sugar model of the London Bridge.

···························· ihir Rajani tried his hand at selling saris and snacks before he decided to become a franchisee for Bangalore’s best known supermarket chain Nilgiri’s. He walks me through the compact, 1,400 sq. ft store he has run for the past one year in Kasturi Nagar, a relatively new neighbourhood in east Bangalore, but one where greenery prevails over glass.

The shiny green and white store is bursting at the seams with some 7,000 types of groceries that span everything from old Nilgiri’s favourites such as 15 types of rice and the signature Rich Plum Cake to the just launched Ready-To-Eat Nilgiri’s Porridge and coldpressed Gingelly Oil. Rajani’s already been told he needs to offer at least 1,000 more items at his store. An average Nilgiri’s store stocks nearly double the items you would find in a competing supermarket chain so shoppers often get a sense that the store is overcrowded. The South Indian brand, with annual store sales of `600 crore, sells nearly 1,000 items through its private label; many are priced at par with national brands.

Rajani’s wife Molly doesn’t believe he reads enough so she’s instructed him to glue strips of quotations on to the spine of every shelf. As you walk from jams to snacks you learn that a day without laughter is a day wasted and that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.

The 33-year-old businessman is usually at the store interacting with his customers; when he’s not around you’re likely to spot his father. It’s so mom-and-pop that it’s hard to believe one of Bangalore’s best known family-run businesses, The Nilgiri Dairy Farm Pvt. Ltd (Nilgiri’s for short), that began in 1905 and was handed down through four generations, is now 65% owned by the UK-based

M

COURTESY ‘SAGA

OF THE

NILGIRI’S’

private equity investor Actis.

The story of Nilgiri’s, like every great Indian business story, is one of enterprise, change and one person’s desire to rise above his allotted life.

Muthuswami Mudaliar, born sometime in the late 19th century, near Erode in Tamil Nadu, should have been a weaver like everyone else in his family. But he wanted to explore the world. Eventually the school dropout became a runner in the postal department, trekking regularly between Wellington and Coonoor. When he spotted a business opportunity, he imported a couple of machines and began selling cream, and then butter, with his two brothers.

In Saga of the Nilgiris 1905, author R. Natarajan recounts that Muthuswami often carried a 30pound (around 14kg) cream tin on his head and walked up the hill to Wellington. In 1905 the brothers set up Nilgiri’s, but soon a family dispute resulted in Muthuswami moving to Ooty and starting from scratch. He went back to doing what he knew best: making butter.

Word-of-mouth news of Muthuswami’s pasteurized Crown butter spread and soon Spencer’s, a British trading house, began stocking the brand at its stores.

Bangalore seemed like a natural next step and Nilgiri’s entered the city in 1939 with its first, tiny store on Brigade Road. By the 1940s, Muthuswami’s family had moved to what was now the headquarters of the brand.

The kindly looking M.S. Mani, the third son of Muthuswami Mudaliar, remembers the 1940s when Bangalore’s retail artery Bri-

gade Road was known more for its bars than its shops. Bascos was the haunt of famous boxer Gunboat Jack and The Old Bull and Bush bar stood shoulder to shoulder with the first Nilgiri’s store, which then sold only a few staples such as bread, butter, eggs, biscuits and imported jam. Nilgiri’s main business was to supply butter to the British military camps in the city; the surplus was sold at the store.

By the 1950s, their plum cake had become very popular (these days the company sells more than 100 tonnes every Christmas and sourcing for ingredients begins in October). A bakery unit was installed in the room behind the store where the family had stayed when they first moved to Bangalore from Ooty. Mani spent many nights at the store. Movie goers from the neighbouring Rex Theatre (“It screened English movies always,” he says) would often wake him up by knocking on the shutters near midnight, after the late show ended, to buy some bread or eggs.

Mani’s brother M. Chenniappan was the entrepreneurial star of his generation and is credited with launching supermarket format stores (the first one opened in 1971) and expanding the business. Popularizing sliced bread packed in wax-coated paper was an early achievement. In those days when a customer asked for bread in rice-eating south India, the salesman would inevitably enquire if anyone was unwell at home. Through his life, Chenniappan was a faithful follower of his father’s business policy: “No

FOUNDER Muthuswami Mudaliar TYPE OF COMPANY Privately owned KEY PRODUCTS Grocery staples, baked products and dairy WHERE TO BUY At 125 Nilgiri’s 1905 stores in 15 cities in south India SUCCESS MANTRA Updating a successful heritage brand that has always stood for quality and freshness adulteration, no lying.”

His son C. Ramachandran was responsible for the popular annual Nilgiri’s Cake Show that began in 1970. Ramachandran, who first saw a sugar model when he was window-shopping in Brussels whilst on holiday, decided he would replicate the idea back home. His first attempt was a 14inch model of the Eiffel Tower.

The next year, he doubled its height. As the years progressed and the crowds who came to see the sugar models started disrupting customers at the store, the exhibit was moved to a wellknown girls’ school in Bangalore.

“When the size of the model became bigger than the size of the room allotted in the school, the annual show was moved to Palace Grounds,” says Ramachandran over the phone.

Nilgiri’s was sold in 2006, one year after it turned 100. Thirty-five per cent of the company is still owned by family members. Ramachandran’s son Prabhu, who runs a fleet of luxury buses among other things, is now the majority stakeholder within the family.

“We try to identify national champions and then invest in them,” says Shomik Mukherjee, partner at Actis who manages the investment in Nilgiri’s. Actis invests in local companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

One of the main challenges for Actis is to make sure the brand stays contemporary without killing the historic associations that Nilgiri’s shoppers swear by. So, for example, while the Nilgiri’s vanilla drops made by hand are increasingly difficult to produce as the company scales up, they haven’t been discontinued because shoppers have always associated this product with Nilgiri’s. Heritage comes with great perks too. Some 1,500 dairy farmers of the 2,500 who supply milk to Nilgiri’s have been doing so for at least 30 years, says Murali Krishnan, chief executive officer of Nilgiri’s.

What did Nilgiri’s stand for, I ask N. Palaniappan, who was CEO of the family-run company from 1971 to 2006, when it was sold. “Quality, cleanliness and right price for right quality,” he replies promptly. Some things never change.

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

L10

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

IN 1884, IN A BY­LANE OF CALCUTTA, THE HARMONIUM, AS INDIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC KNOWS IT TODAY, WAS INVENTED. THE SOWERS OF ‘SUR’ STRUGGLE TO KEEP IN TUNE INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

Sound­clouding centuries B Y S HAMIK B AG ··························· FOUNDER warkin & Son Pvt. Ltd, says Pratap Ghosh, one INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE Dwarkanath Ghose DAY DAY of three partners of the INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL Kolkata-based musical DAY TYPE OF instrument manufacturing SPECIAL COMPANY company established in 1875, Pvt. Ltd was not exactly set up as a rant against the British. In fact, Ghosh mentions dispassionately, KEY PRODUCTS Dwarkin was handheld by Harmonium, violin, tanpura European mentors in its early and dealers in guitars, days; the name of the company electronic tanpuras and too is an Anglicization.

The name Dwarkin resulted tablas of other brands from a pairing of the names of Dwarkanath Ghose, Dwarkin’s sell as many as 60 harmoniums culture. It is said that the WHERE TO BUY founder, and the foreign firm every month; its sales started dip- legendary Indian classical 8/2, Esplanade East, Thomas Dawkins, from which ping from the mid-1970s. These musician Allauddin Khan met Kolkata, West Bengal Dwarkanath imported musical days, the family-run company English bandmasters at one of instruments in the early days. It reports sales of 120-odd harmotheir shops, a meeting that later (www.dwarkin.co.in) was so named by Upendrakniums annually. The sharp dip is helped him form the Maihar ishore Ray, who was, among explained by the advent of elecBand. “One has to admit that SUCCESS other things, a composer and tronic keyboards, labour trouble, Dwarkin & Son wasn’t merely a MANTRA writer. He felt an Anglicized the shortage of skilled workmusical instruments shop,” Experience, quality and name would work better consid- men—most of the work is done wrote Padma Bhushan awardee ering the Indian craving for all manually and requires a high and tabla player Pandit Jnan craftsmanship things foreign. level of expertise and precision— Prakash Ghosh of his family Yet, for the 137 years of its and little advancement in terms business in the Bengali literary existence, Dwarkin & Son has of research and development at served a habit that many would Dwarkin, according to Ghosh, a consider to be quintessentially relative of Dwarkanath.

Indian. In 1884, Dwarkanath, in It is quite apt to say that an epiphanic moment, realized Dwarkin has lived off its one that the playing posture of the big innovation. harmonium needed to conform “Right now, our primary aim to the Indian habit of sitting is to maintain the position that cross-legged on the floor for eatwe have. Only later can we think ing, chatting, or a musical perof increasing our production and formance. Chairs and tables were sales footprint. We, of course, not commonly used. have Dwarkin’s goodwill to bank In reaction, Dwarkanath upon,” says Ghosh, whose two started tweaking the Western partners are his brothers Ashish pedal harmonium, where the Ghosh and Pradip Ghosh. bellows are operated by the feet.

The support is wellHe customized the bellows, keyentrenched. In the initial days, board and reeds of the instruDwarkanath found a patron in ment and what emerged eventu- Jyotirindranath Tagore, the elder ally is what has come to be brother of Nobel laureate known as the hand-held, or box, Rabindranath Tagore, and a harmonium. The instrument no musician, playwright and painter longer stood upright, the feet no of note. Once critical of the shrill longer played a role. tonality of the modified Through his innovation, Dwar- harmonium, a complaint duly kanath ensured that the modified attended to by the company, harmonium adhered to the Jyotirindranath wrote to Messrs Indian character of music: While Dwarkin & Son on 23 September one hand of the instrumentalist 1888 about being “glad to find worked on the bellows of the har- that you have succeeded in monium, the other played the imparting that rich mellowness notes—Indian classical music to its tone which is so desirable being primarily nodal in characin such instruments”. ter as opposed to the chordal Another long-time Dwarkin Western form where often both patron, Upendrakishore—father hands are required to play the of writer and playwright Sukuharmonium while the feet remain mar Ray and grandfather of filmat the bellows. maker Satyajit Ray—wrote to Soon enough, Dwarkin’s fame Dwarkanath in 1889: “You as the “inventor of the hand hardeserve every praise for the sucmonium” ensured that sales of cessful manner in which you other instruments like the accorbeen trying to meet the want of dion, esraj, violin, clarinet and an instrument really suited to cornet stocked by Dwarkin paled the Indian climate”. in comparison with the IndianPlaced below the glass tableized harmonium. top at Ghosh’s office is a careToday, at the Baguiati showfully displayed copy of an 1888 room and workshop of Dwarkin dated letter written by Rabindin east Kolkata, a handful of harranath Tagore. “The instrument,” moniums sit on shelves, waiting he wrote to Dwarkin, “is ideally for buyers. There are many more suited for Indian music. I would Rhythm central: acoustic Spanish guitars in the like to buy this instrument if you (clockwise from glass showcases—in recent years, will write to me its value.” above) A quirky true to the changing tonal fibre of The letter is not mere recomad; violin and contemporary Indian music, the mendation. In later years, when military bagpipes demand for guitars has outcontroversy raged among Tagore from an old cata­ stripped that for the harmonium. scholars over the use of the harlogue; the Bagui­ Denting the company’s fortunes monium by the bard, the letter ati workshop; and further are the cheap Chinese proved to be critical evidence of maestro V. Bal­ instruments that began flooding Tagore’s support, says Ghosh. sara plays a the market after liberalization.

Since then, Dwarkin and the Dwarkin Paddle In the decades following indebox harmonium have been an harmonium. pendence, the company used to integral part of Indian musical

1875

Dwarkin & Son

D

magazine Desh in 1980. “With honesty, dedication and a love for music as his capital, Dwarkanath Ghose could create the kind of cultural environment which is undoubtedly of historic importance.”

Over the years, manufacturers like Sarat Sardar & Sons and Melody and Pakrashi & Co. have followed Dwarkin’s innovation.

But one of its biggest competitors has been G Rith, a harmonium-manufacturing company started by a former employee of Dwarkin. “People who are into music invariably have to have a connection with Dwarkin,” says Bengali author Buddadeb Guha.

“They have been an institution.”

But the most recurrent compliment to Dwarkin comes every evening from certain pockets of Kolkata when neighbourhoods come alive with the sound of riyaaz, accompanied, all so often, by the buttressing sound of a Dwarkin harmonium.

Write to lounge@livemint.com INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

L11

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

BOOKSELLERS TO THE LADIES OF THE EMPIRE, THE STORY OF THIS LITTLE CHENNAI BOOK STORE, NOW OWNED BY AN ENGINEERING FIRM, IS ALSO A HISTORY THAT TRACES THE ORIGINS OF INDIAN PUBLISHING INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

First edition INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

PHOTOGRAPHS

Higginbotham’s

1844

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

NATHAN G/MINT

B Y G EETA D OCTOR ···························· FOUNDER tepping into Higginbotham’s, Abel Joshua Higginbotham the country’s oldest surviving INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE DAY DAY bookshop, past two sets of INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL sealed glass doors is a Dr Who TYPE OF COMPANY DAY moment. It’s a time traveller’s SPECIAL Pvt. Ltd destination.

In one instant you are standing KEY PRODUCTS outside in the dust and heat of Chennai’s busiest artery, Anna Fiction, non­fiction, general, Salai, as the 21st century smashes children’s, school and college its teeth down the centre of the textbooks, professional, road with the up-and-coming higher academics text and Metro Rail; in the other you are in reference books Victorian England.

There is silence. Even the air seems still. You could be in a WHERE TO BUY church, the sloping sides of the Outlets in Chennai, pitched roof, with wooden sides, Bangalore and 60 other envelop a large hall under which locations the books have been arranged in serried ranks and titles such as “Religion”, “Philosophy”, “Travel”, SUCCESS MANTRA “Cookery”, “Embroidery” and of Customer loyalty, local late, with racks of CDs and DVDs roots, strong distribution that tempt you with the images of network dancers who ask: “Do you want to learn Kuchipudi?” Or labelled, “Kathak for beginners”.

The light filters through the stained-glass windows that pierce magazine kiosks at all major the front wall, painting pencils of railway stations in the south. colour. The opposite wall has They may have been highgarlanded memorials to the minded but snobs they were not. various owners. The This is where the early 20th uncompromising stare of the century memsahibs with their love original owner, Abel Joshua for romance and mystery came Higginbotham, librarian to the hunting for periodicals such as Wesleyan Book Depository, fixes “Among the many elusive and One of their first books was the Women’s Weekly and Woman And you with a stern command. indescribable charms of life in somewhat less than serious Home, which had the latest “Silence,” he seems to say, “I Madras City,” writes the governor, sounding volume titled Sweet fashions in Europe for their tailors command you, hold your tongue “is the existence of my favorite Dishes: A Little Treatise on to copy, recipes for jam-roly-poly and open your mind to the bookshop, Higginbotham’s on Confectionery by Wyvern that for their khansamahs to reproduce treasures that I lay before you.” He Mount Road. In this bookshop, I came out in 1884. Though the in their tea and coffee estates as sports mutton-chop whiskers and can see beautiful editions of the official booksellers and suppliers to well as the latest Agatha Christies, a full head of hair. As the story works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, many of the government-owned or Daphne du Mauriers and Marie goes, when the Wesleyan Book Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace…”

-managed institutions—as for Corellis to cherish. With the Depository found that there were He enumerates all his favourite instance the equally well-stocked establishment of the famous no takers for their books, they Greeks and Romans and then Connemara Public Library that has boarding schools and educational sold the remaining stock to goes on to list the French and the its own fabulously wood-panelled institutions in all the major towns Higginbotham’s.

Germans, ending with the and stained-glass interiors—not far of what was known as the Madras Higginbotham set up a small recommendation, “Altogether a from Connemara, Higginbotham’s Presidency, the firm expanded its shop in 1844. His success lay in delightful place for the casual always kept the lay readers, reach to cater to their needs. As that he had an encyclopedic browser and a serious book lover.” particular the ladies of the empire, we shall see this forms the core of memory. He could remember the It’s hardly a wonder then that in mind. their business interests today. name of every book that was when the Prince of Wales visited The 1869 opening of the Suez To return briefly to the available and not only procure it in 1875, he should have given his Canal, popularly known as “The chronological history, next to for his customers but also suggest royal seal of approval to Highway to India”, made it Higginbotham’s is a similar books that he felt they might want Higginbotham’s. The framed possible for Higginbotham’s to get framed portrait of his son C.H. to acquire. proclamation is something that the latest publications for a more Higginbotham. He took over from By 1859, he had made such a they still flourish with pride before broad-based readership. There his father in 1891. It’s to him that name for himself that we find the the interested visitor. were Higginbotham’s branches in the credit must go for expanding governor of the time, Lord They had already expanded into Bangalore and Ootacamund and the business in many directions.

Trevelyan, writing to Lord selling stationery and a printing the even more popular The new building with its Macaulay in these flattering terms: workshop for their own imprint.

Higginbotham’s newspaper and distinctive façade, tall arched windows and spacious back areas for storage and printing was completed in 1904. It instantly became a distinctive landmark on what was then Mount Road (now Anna Salai).

In 1925, John Oakshott Robinson, of the equally old and famous company Spencer’s, took over The Madras Mail, an eveninger and strong establishment paper that was famous for printing an illustrated cartoon strip, “Curly Wee” and Higginbotham’s, and merged them with his printing company Associated Printers and Spencer’s to form Associated Publishers.

In 1945, S. Anantharamakrishnan, a pioneering industrialist of the south and founder of the Amalgamations Group, bought Associated Publishers. He already had a printing firm, Addison & Co., in his portfolio. Addison, it may be added, was named in honour of

S

Time travel: (clock­ wise from top, left) Sweet Dishes, the first book the store sold; a store at the Bangalore city railway station; the flagship book­ store on Anna Salai in Chennai; and a detail of the original stained­ glass windows and teak staircase.

BY

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

Joseph Addison, the famous essayist and coffee house habitué in London. Despite its core interests being in engineering and manufacturing in the automotive sector, with 50 plants across the country, Amalgamations Group describes itself as a banyan tree with branches in the agro and service sectors.

Though S. Muthiah in his book Getting India on the Move: The 150 Year Saga of Simpsons of Madras, in his chapter on Higginbotham’s, remarks on what strange bedfellows the Higginbotham’s ancestry must have made to those of the Anantharamakrishnan family, saying there is a strange symbiosis at work. For the Amalgamations Group has managed to retain an outlook that is both traditional and innovative.

They would probably agree with what Addison has to say about books in general: “Books are legacies that a great genius leaves for mankind, which are delivered from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are as yet unborn.”

As I wait for S. Chandrasekhar, the director of Higginbotham’s, to walk down the curving wooden staircase from the mezzanine floor, I imagine that it could be Addison himself. He gravely hands me a copy of the collected speeches and writings of Winston Churchill. Then he also points me in the direction of their fastestselling book of the day, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium. His response to why the group owns an old-fashioned brand like Higginbotham’s is feisty.

“The question is rather shocking!” says Chandrasekhar.

“How can you presume that retaining a brand such as Higginbotham’s is old-fashioned?

Higginbotham’s is the name of an individual, the founder of the book store. There are many such examples of the names of founders such as Tata, Bata and others. This does not imply that they are also old-fashioned and conservative.

“It’s the brand that is valuable.

Generations of people have known that this is an exclusive book store; we have had famous minds like C. Rajagopalachari, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to name just two of them, as our valued customers.

Equally we have identified core sectors in the fast-expanding educational field. And plan to open what we call Campus Book stores. We are already dealing with e-books and electronic data, particularly journals. The 20% growth we have registered during the last year is not accidental and I can assure you it is going to continue in the years to come.

“More than anything else,” Chandrasekhar says, “we have identified our role as a media to promote knowledge.”

Higginbotham’s is not just another bookshop with a fancy ceiling or a brand with a snappy slogan, but a way of life that carries with it a memory of the south.

Geeta Doctor is a Chennai-based writer and critic.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L12

LOUNGE

L13

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ABEL ROBINSON/MINTINDEPENDENCE

DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

EVEN THOUGH IT HAS CHANGED HANDS OVER THE LAST 100­ODD YEARS, FOR MANY GENERATIONS, EVERY TREAT WAS A WAIT FOR THEIR BLACK FOREST CAKE

Liquid gold: (clockwise from extreme left) Old Monk rum being bottled at the plant in Solan, Himachal Pradesh; signature Old Monk bottles being filled at the Ghaziabad factory; one of three life­sized stuffed eagles at the Mohan Meakin managing director’s office; N.N. Mohan (left) with the then defence minister Jag­ jivan Ram (right) at the brewery; Naval Punch malt whisky, bottled in 1976; and Solan No. 1 and Merri were once brands of beer.

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Sweet endings

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN

various aspects of production.

There is the overpowering heat FOUNDER ···························· from the assembly line of ovens The Italian Monginis he overpowering sweet in one section, intensified by smell on the ground floor melting chocolate in another brothers of the two-storeyed bluecorner, offset soon by the pink building does not faze any chilling calm of the icing area TYPE OF of the dozen-odd workers where another set of workers COMPANY putting the final touches to a squeeze “smileys” on more Pvt. Ltd conveyor belt of cakes. ThereINDEPENDENCE are cakes. Traditional handwork INDEPENDENCE DAY everywhere, mostly DAY mixes well with technology—just cakes INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL circular ones, which are being SPECIAL ahead, a machine prints a glossy KEY PRODUCTS DAY smothered either with white image of Spider-Man in edible SPECIAL Cakes, cookies, chocolates cream or glossy chocolate. ink on what will eventually end The father and son duo of up at a kiddy party.

WHERE TO BUY Zoher H. Khorakiwala and Qusai Though the exact dates are not Z. Khorakiwala stand amid the clear, Monginis is around 100 Monginis shops, grocery sugary treats, equally unaffected. years old, started by two Italian stores, online at They, like the workers at brothers in pre-independent www.monginis.net Monginis Foods Pvt. Ltd’s India, in an eponymous production unit in Andheri, restaurant-cum-store in Fort. At SUCCESS Mumbai, have been there, seen some point post-independence, that. Many times, practically and history gets a little blurred MANTRA every day; these are merely here, they sold the store to a Logistics. A unique model products of their enterprise, not family now identified only as the that can’t be copy­pasted desirable commodities that Khuranas. They held the firm for would have others salivating. just a few months before selling it Zoher, the chairman and to the Khorakiwala family in managing director, inherited the 1961—the family bought the company from his father Hussain space, actually, for Akbarallys, the queue up outside the shop. They and shares it with his three departmental store. used wooden trays at the bakery younger brothers. Idris and But since all the baking and fresh cakes and puffs would Quresh handle Monginis’ equipment already existed, the be brought to the counter. It production and distribution in family decided not to shut down would get over in minutes. Then Cairo, Egypt, while Kumail is Monginis and began selling its the next batch would be made. It joint managing director in products at a counter at was a constant cycle.”

Mumbai. Qusai leads the third Akbarallys. Today, Akbarallys’ As Akbarallys gained fame, the generation; at 28, he has stepped furniture store stands at the Khorakiwalas felt the need to into the business ahead of his place where the Italians once diversify, which they did with a younger siblings. mixed dough. store in Bandra. “Even then, in Their office, in a lane “I remember when we were south Mumbai, there were a few identified by the company’s children,” says Zoher, who bakers, including another Italian name, is on the second floor; the started working in the family and a Swiss. But they made lower levels are dedicated to business in 1972, “people would highly-priced Western cakes, arun.j@livemint.com

T

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

IN THE HILLS OF SOLAN, THE COUNTRY’S OLDEST BEER, FIRST MALT WHISKY, AND THE CULT OLD MONK RUM ARE STILL AS HEADY AS THEY WERE ALL THOSE YEARS AGO INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

anil.p@livemint.com

······························ f Edward Dyer and H.G. Meakin could be transported in a time machine to their erstwhile liquor breweries and bottling plants in Kasauli and Solan, respectively, in Himachal Pradesh, they would find things very much the same—as though time had stood still within the perimeter of the complex.

Of course, their joint venture, Dyer Meakin and Co., was rechristened Mohan Meakin Breweries Ltd 17 years after the management passed into Indian hands in 1949—it became Mohan Meakin Ltd in 1980. Their premium products, Golden Eagle beer and Solan No. 1 whisky, are mere shadows of themselves though they are still popular in the vicinity, while Old Monk rum, a product added by the Indian management, has acquired a cult following that now commands a global footprint. All the products have continued to source water from the natural spring located in Solan, for more than 150 years, preserving the signature taste.

Herein lies the contradiction.

How does a brand that is so old survive such stiff competition despite not having undertaken any drastic makeover? It simply

I

defeats logic.

At Kasauli, where Dyer established a brewery that launched the country’s oldest beer in Lion, the interiors are largely untouched. It is now a distillery that produces malt spirit. The entire process, including the maturing room where the oak casks are preserved, is mostly the same vintage as when the company was acquired by N.N. Mohan in 1949. Anecdotally, oldtimers maintain that nothing has really changed; archival pictures that can be accessed on the company’s premises support this narrative.

In Solan, a substantially larger location now houses the brewery—this used to be the distillery and Kasauli was the brewery till a swap after the end of World War I, when Dyer and Meakin decided to merge their otherwise independent firms. The spacious office of the managing director is like a set staged for shooting the next episode of the American advertising serial Mad Men. The 1960s-style furnishing contrasts with three life-sized stuffed eagles, after whom the beer is named. The residence of the managing director, Kapil Mohan, located a little over a kilometre from the brewery and offering a breathtaking view of the green valley and hills beyond, is

FOUNDER Edward Dyer TYPE OF COMPANY Delisted KEY PRODUCTS Whisky, rum, beer, fruit juices and breakfast cereals WHERE TO BUY In select liquor stores.

Cereals in grocery stores SUCCESS MANTRA No compromise on quality

similarly preserved in time.

Affirming that status quo has largely been retained, Mohan, managing director for 38 years, reiterates for good measure, “We don’t want to change.” The firm is tightly held, with the promoters accounting for just under 66% of the equity.

Not surprisingly their approach

to marketing sounds anachronistic in an era where liquor companies fall over each other to undertake surrogate advertising. Their mantra was “rock-bottom prices” for their products in the 19th century, and it continues to be that. Solan No. 1, a pure malt whisky, is priced at `270 for a 1-litre bottle in Solan. As it was 150 years ago, ABEL ROBINSON/MINT

MINT PRIYANKA PARASHAR/

Rum diaries: Casks of whisky ageing in the Kasauli brewery; and (left) master­blender P.N. Sapra.

saleability has been left to the ability of the drink to ring up its own faithful; so, despite a surge in competition, there is no advertising or marketing support.

“We do not advertise. I will not, and as long as I am in this chair, we will not (advertise),” says 84year-old Mohan, who neither drinks nor smokes and is avowedly spiritual.

“The best way of my advertising is the product: When it comes to you and you taste it and then you look for the difference and say what is it. That is the best advertisement.” As the patriarch of the Mohan family and head of a tightly controlled family-owned company, his is the last word.

Sceptics believe that not engaging in marketing or advertising (even if it is surrogate), while virtuous, makes no sense. Not just the industry, the economy too has transformed dramatically. The number of firms has grown and continues to increase.

According to the All India Distillers’ Association, the Delhibased lobby group for the industry, its membership has grown from 15 in 1953, when it was put together, to around 200—accounting for 80% of the distillation capacity in the country.

The economy, in the meanwhile, has transformed into a near $2 trillion (around `110 trillion) economy—quadrupling in the last decade. With newly acquired chutzpah, the country has also brought down tariffs and introduced a foreign element to competition. Between 2002 and 2011, the company’s turnover failed to match the spectacular growth of the Indian economy. The turnover increased from `292.71 crore in 2002 to `408.40 crore in 2011; in 2010, the company actually posted losses of `4.52 crore, before reporting in the black in 2011 by earning profit before tax of `10.54 crore.

P.N. Sapra, a consultant to distilleries, points out that though the industry is growing in size every year, Mohan Meakin’s market share is not. He should know, since his professional career has been closely associated with the company and maps the lifespan of the industry in modern India. The 92-year-old started out with the company in 1943 as a laboratory chemist (at a salary of `100 per month) in the Solan unit; he stayed on till 1962, when he moved to Jagatjit Industries and became the architect of the suc-

cessful Aristocrat brand of whisky.

Locals in Chandigarh say the same: Failure to market the brand has led to a gradual erosion of market share. Till about the mid1980s, when competition actually started taking root, the Mohan Meakin brands dominated. Since then, particularly in the last decade, they say, the popularity of these products has diminished and is restricted mostly to Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab—with most consumers swearing by the unique taste attributed to the natural spring water at Solan.

Ironically, just when even the most loyal within the company are beginning to give up, change is under way. To begin with, the Kasauli unit of Mohan Meakin has, in a departure from the past, started selling some of the alcohol produced in the company to other manufacturers. According to G.S. Rathaur, chief executive officer at the Kasauli distillery, about twothirds of the alcohol is sold like this—generating an alternative source of revenue.

At the same time, the company is ready to launch a single malt— Solan Gold; though they refused to disclose the price, it is expected to once again be a product that has the potential to disrupt the market. Incremental, but all this is change indeed.

Now, Mohan discloses, the company is poised to take this process to unprecedented highs: a tie-up with Diageo Plc., manufacturers of the iconic Johnnie Walker whisky. While he declined to talk about the exact nature of the relationship, he hinted that it would entail a marketing tie-up.

“We will bottle their products and we bottle our own products under our own technical knowledge. We may make a selling company,” he says.

It is a deal that has been rumoured for over a year. According to Mohan, the two companies touched base afresh when he went to Paris for a surgery and negotiations are now in the final leg.

If indeed it does fructify, it would undoubtedly etch an entirely new chapter in the history of what is probably India’s oldest liquor company. It would also be in keeping with the patriarch’s desired legacy: “Providing better whiskies to consumers.”

Moulishree Srivastava contributed to this story.

Monginis

B Y A NIL P ADMANABHAN

1900s

1800s

Solan No. 1

The accidental legacy

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Fresh from the oven: Zoher (front) and Qusai Khorakiwala at their production facility in Andheri; and a photograph from a 1985 newspaper article.

which we made affordable. Our products were available in grocery stores but they would just lie in a corner. So we thought we might as well open an exclusive cake shop,” says 60year-old Zoher.

The Andheri unit started in 1986, when the Fort operation was wrapped up. By then, Hussain and his sons had taken over Monginis after the various business interests of the family were divided among the brothers.

Qusai says his father and uncles saw the baking industry playing a “niche market role rather than in the mass market”. They applied their learnings from their travels abroad in starting franchises, in both manufacturing and cake shops, which led to Monginis becoming a national player.

The first franchise store opened in Kolkata in the 1990s, often the reason why the brand is mistakenly considered to have started there.

The current generation, led by Qusai, wants to take Monginis forward through the modern channels of retail—online, across B-towns, with multiple business models, so that people across the world can have their cake and eat it too.

Qusai talks about their four business models—the cake shop for freshly made everyday products, the long shelf life open market packaged goods which are distributed in 17 states, and e-commerce. The fourth business model that’s still in the works is a bake-shop unit for smaller cities which do not need a full manufacturing unit. It’s the concept that will take Monginis strongly into smaller towns like Jaipur, Aurangabad and Raipur, among others.

Their existing business has already made Monginis among the biggest players in the organized sector in terms of volumes, with their target audience remaining the uppermiddle, middle and lower-middle classes. “There is no national player in my segment,” says Qusai. “For example, Merwans are killing us in Andheri, but they have only one shop.” An indication of Monginis’ size comes from the average production generated in Mumbai—with 229 outlets, they make 30,000 pastries a day and 7,000 gateaus (from K-5kg).

These numbers dip during weekdays and peak on weekends, says Qusai. During Christmas, the figures turn turtle: to about 300,000 pastries and 40,000 gateaus a day.

Qusai admits he does not mind being known as a “station brand” for Monginis is often found near local train stations in the city. “We have a strong lowermiddle class client base who are loyal,” he says, sitting in front of a poster that declares, “A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands”.

Even though their products have changed over the years, there are some perennial favourites like butter cream and Black Forest. “I don’t know why,” he muses. Their focus recently has been on—and with great success—the eggless and vegetarian cakes. What Qusai has not been able to explain is the total failure of their sugarless products. “We have the highest cases of diabetes in the world, so I don’t know how to comprehend the market.”

L12

LOUNGE

L13

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ABEL ROBINSON/MINTINDEPENDENCE

DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

EVEN THOUGH IT HAS CHANGED HANDS OVER THE LAST 100­ODD YEARS, FOR MANY GENERATIONS, EVERY TREAT WAS A WAIT FOR THEIR BLACK FOREST CAKE

Liquid gold: (clockwise from extreme left) Old Monk rum being bottled at the plant in Solan, Himachal Pradesh; signature Old Monk bottles being filled at the Ghaziabad factory; one of three life­sized stuffed eagles at the Mohan Meakin managing director’s office; N.N. Mohan (left) with the then defence minister Jag­ jivan Ram (right) at the brewery; Naval Punch malt whisky, bottled in 1976; and Solan No. 1 and Merri were once brands of beer.

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Sweet endings

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN

various aspects of production.

There is the overpowering heat FOUNDER ···························· from the assembly line of ovens The Italian Monginis he overpowering sweet in one section, intensified by smell on the ground floor melting chocolate in another brothers of the two-storeyed bluecorner, offset soon by the pink building does not faze any chilling calm of the icing area TYPE OF of the dozen-odd workers where another set of workers COMPANY putting the final touches to a squeeze “smileys” on more Pvt. Ltd conveyor belt of cakes. ThereINDEPENDENCE are cakes. Traditional handwork INDEPENDENCE DAY everywhere, mostly DAY mixes well with technology—just cakes INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL circular ones, which are being SPECIAL ahead, a machine prints a glossy KEY PRODUCTS DAY smothered either with white image of Spider-Man in edible SPECIAL Cakes, cookies, chocolates cream or glossy chocolate. ink on what will eventually end The father and son duo of up at a kiddy party.

WHERE TO BUY Zoher H. Khorakiwala and Qusai Though the exact dates are not Z. Khorakiwala stand amid the clear, Monginis is around 100 Monginis shops, grocery sugary treats, equally unaffected. years old, started by two Italian stores, online at They, like the workers at brothers in pre-independent www.monginis.net Monginis Foods Pvt. Ltd’s India, in an eponymous production unit in Andheri, restaurant-cum-store in Fort. At SUCCESS Mumbai, have been there, seen some point post-independence, that. Many times, practically and history gets a little blurred MANTRA every day; these are merely here, they sold the store to a Logistics. A unique model products of their enterprise, not family now identified only as the that can’t be copy­pasted desirable commodities that Khuranas. They held the firm for would have others salivating. just a few months before selling it Zoher, the chairman and to the Khorakiwala family in managing director, inherited the 1961—the family bought the company from his father Hussain space, actually, for Akbarallys, the queue up outside the shop. They and shares it with his three departmental store. used wooden trays at the bakery younger brothers. Idris and But since all the baking and fresh cakes and puffs would Quresh handle Monginis’ equipment already existed, the be brought to the counter. It production and distribution in family decided not to shut down would get over in minutes. Then Cairo, Egypt, while Kumail is Monginis and began selling its the next batch would be made. It joint managing director in products at a counter at was a constant cycle.”

Mumbai. Qusai leads the third Akbarallys. Today, Akbarallys’ As Akbarallys gained fame, the generation; at 28, he has stepped furniture store stands at the Khorakiwalas felt the need to into the business ahead of his place where the Italians once diversify, which they did with a younger siblings. mixed dough. store in Bandra. “Even then, in Their office, in a lane “I remember when we were south Mumbai, there were a few identified by the company’s children,” says Zoher, who bakers, including another Italian name, is on the second floor; the started working in the family and a Swiss. But they made lower levels are dedicated to business in 1972, “people would highly-priced Western cakes, arun.j@livemint.com

T

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

IN THE HILLS OF SOLAN, THE COUNTRY’S OLDEST BEER, FIRST MALT WHISKY, AND THE CULT OLD MONK RUM ARE STILL AS HEADY AS THEY WERE ALL THOSE YEARS AGO INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

anil.p@livemint.com

······························ f Edward Dyer and H.G. Meakin could be transported in a time machine to their erstwhile liquor breweries and bottling plants in Kasauli and Solan, respectively, in Himachal Pradesh, they would find things very much the same—as though time had stood still within the perimeter of the complex.

Of course, their joint venture, Dyer Meakin and Co., was rechristened Mohan Meakin Breweries Ltd 17 years after the management passed into Indian hands in 1949—it became Mohan Meakin Ltd in 1980. Their premium products, Golden Eagle beer and Solan No. 1 whisky, are mere shadows of themselves though they are still popular in the vicinity, while Old Monk rum, a product added by the Indian management, has acquired a cult following that now commands a global footprint. All the products have continued to source water from the natural spring located in Solan, for more than 150 years, preserving the signature taste.

Herein lies the contradiction.

How does a brand that is so old survive such stiff competition despite not having undertaken any drastic makeover? It simply

I

defeats logic.

At Kasauli, where Dyer established a brewery that launched the country’s oldest beer in Lion, the interiors are largely untouched. It is now a distillery that produces malt spirit. The entire process, including the maturing room where the oak casks are preserved, is mostly the same vintage as when the company was acquired by N.N. Mohan in 1949. Anecdotally, oldtimers maintain that nothing has really changed; archival pictures that can be accessed on the company’s premises support this narrative.

In Solan, a substantially larger location now houses the brewery—this used to be the distillery and Kasauli was the brewery till a swap after the end of World War I, when Dyer and Meakin decided to merge their otherwise independent firms. The spacious office of the managing director is like a set staged for shooting the next episode of the American advertising serial Mad Men. The 1960s-style furnishing contrasts with three life-sized stuffed eagles, after whom the beer is named. The residence of the managing director, Kapil Mohan, located a little over a kilometre from the brewery and offering a breathtaking view of the green valley and hills beyond, is

FOUNDER Edward Dyer TYPE OF COMPANY Delisted KEY PRODUCTS Whisky, rum, beer, fruit juices and breakfast cereals WHERE TO BUY In select liquor stores.

Cereals in grocery stores SUCCESS MANTRA No compromise on quality

similarly preserved in time.

Affirming that status quo has largely been retained, Mohan, managing director for 38 years, reiterates for good measure, “We don’t want to change.” The firm is tightly held, with the promoters accounting for just under 66% of the equity.

Not surprisingly their approach

to marketing sounds anachronistic in an era where liquor companies fall over each other to undertake surrogate advertising. Their mantra was “rock-bottom prices” for their products in the 19th century, and it continues to be that. Solan No. 1, a pure malt whisky, is priced at `270 for a 1-litre bottle in Solan. As it was 150 years ago, ABEL ROBINSON/MINT

MINT PRIYANKA PARASHAR/

Rum diaries: Casks of whisky ageing in the Kasauli brewery; and (left) master­blender P.N. Sapra.

saleability has been left to the ability of the drink to ring up its own faithful; so, despite a surge in competition, there is no advertising or marketing support.

“We do not advertise. I will not, and as long as I am in this chair, we will not (advertise),” says 84year-old Mohan, who neither drinks nor smokes and is avowedly spiritual.

“The best way of my advertising is the product: When it comes to you and you taste it and then you look for the difference and say what is it. That is the best advertisement.” As the patriarch of the Mohan family and head of a tightly controlled family-owned company, his is the last word.

Sceptics believe that not engaging in marketing or advertising (even if it is surrogate), while virtuous, makes no sense. Not just the industry, the economy too has transformed dramatically. The number of firms has grown and continues to increase.

According to the All India Distillers’ Association, the Delhibased lobby group for the industry, its membership has grown from 15 in 1953, when it was put together, to around 200—accounting for 80% of the distillation capacity in the country.

The economy, in the meanwhile, has transformed into a near $2 trillion (around `110 trillion) economy—quadrupling in the last decade. With newly acquired chutzpah, the country has also brought down tariffs and introduced a foreign element to competition. Between 2002 and 2011, the company’s turnover failed to match the spectacular growth of the Indian economy. The turnover increased from `292.71 crore in 2002 to `408.40 crore in 2011; in 2010, the company actually posted losses of `4.52 crore, before reporting in the black in 2011 by earning profit before tax of `10.54 crore.

P.N. Sapra, a consultant to distilleries, points out that though the industry is growing in size every year, Mohan Meakin’s market share is not. He should know, since his professional career has been closely associated with the company and maps the lifespan of the industry in modern India. The 92-year-old started out with the company in 1943 as a laboratory chemist (at a salary of `100 per month) in the Solan unit; he stayed on till 1962, when he moved to Jagatjit Industries and became the architect of the suc-

cessful Aristocrat brand of whisky.

Locals in Chandigarh say the same: Failure to market the brand has led to a gradual erosion of market share. Till about the mid1980s, when competition actually started taking root, the Mohan Meakin brands dominated. Since then, particularly in the last decade, they say, the popularity of these products has diminished and is restricted mostly to Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab—with most consumers swearing by the unique taste attributed to the natural spring water at Solan.

Ironically, just when even the most loyal within the company are beginning to give up, change is under way. To begin with, the Kasauli unit of Mohan Meakin has, in a departure from the past, started selling some of the alcohol produced in the company to other manufacturers. According to G.S. Rathaur, chief executive officer at the Kasauli distillery, about twothirds of the alcohol is sold like this—generating an alternative source of revenue.

At the same time, the company is ready to launch a single malt— Solan Gold; though they refused to disclose the price, it is expected to once again be a product that has the potential to disrupt the market. Incremental, but all this is change indeed.

Now, Mohan discloses, the company is poised to take this process to unprecedented highs: a tie-up with Diageo Plc., manufacturers of the iconic Johnnie Walker whisky. While he declined to talk about the exact nature of the relationship, he hinted that it would entail a marketing tie-up.

“We will bottle their products and we bottle our own products under our own technical knowledge. We may make a selling company,” he says.

It is a deal that has been rumoured for over a year. According to Mohan, the two companies touched base afresh when he went to Paris for a surgery and negotiations are now in the final leg.

If indeed it does fructify, it would undoubtedly etch an entirely new chapter in the history of what is probably India’s oldest liquor company. It would also be in keeping with the patriarch’s desired legacy: “Providing better whiskies to consumers.”

Moulishree Srivastava contributed to this story.

Monginis

B Y A NIL P ADMANABHAN

1900s

1800s

Solan No. 1

The accidental legacy

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Fresh from the oven: Zoher (front) and Qusai Khorakiwala at their production facility in Andheri; and a photograph from a 1985 newspaper article.

which we made affordable. Our products were available in grocery stores but they would just lie in a corner. So we thought we might as well open an exclusive cake shop,” says 60year-old Zoher.

The Andheri unit started in 1986, when the Fort operation was wrapped up. By then, Hussain and his sons had taken over Monginis after the various business interests of the family were divided among the brothers.

Qusai says his father and uncles saw the baking industry playing a “niche market role rather than in the mass market”. They applied their learnings from their travels abroad in starting franchises, in both manufacturing and cake shops, which led to Monginis becoming a national player.

The first franchise store opened in Kolkata in the 1990s, often the reason why the brand is mistakenly considered to have started there.

The current generation, led by Qusai, wants to take Monginis forward through the modern channels of retail—online, across B-towns, with multiple business models, so that people across the world can have their cake and eat it too.

Qusai talks about their four business models—the cake shop for freshly made everyday products, the long shelf life open market packaged goods which are distributed in 17 states, and e-commerce. The fourth business model that’s still in the works is a bake-shop unit for smaller cities which do not need a full manufacturing unit. It’s the concept that will take Monginis strongly into smaller towns like Jaipur, Aurangabad and Raipur, among others.

Their existing business has already made Monginis among the biggest players in the organized sector in terms of volumes, with their target audience remaining the uppermiddle, middle and lower-middle classes. “There is no national player in my segment,” says Qusai. “For example, Merwans are killing us in Andheri, but they have only one shop.” An indication of Monginis’ size comes from the average production generated in Mumbai—with 229 outlets, they make 30,000 pastries a day and 7,000 gateaus (from K-5kg).

These numbers dip during weekdays and peak on weekends, says Qusai. During Christmas, the figures turn turtle: to about 300,000 pastries and 40,000 gateaus a day.

Qusai admits he does not mind being known as a “station brand” for Monginis is often found near local train stations in the city. “We have a strong lowermiddle class client base who are loyal,” he says, sitting in front of a poster that declares, “A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands”.

Even though their products have changed over the years, there are some perennial favourites like butter cream and Black Forest. “I don’t know why,” he muses. Their focus recently has been on—and with great success—the eggless and vegetarian cakes. What Qusai has not been able to explain is the total failure of their sugarless products. “We have the highest cases of diabetes in the world, so I don’t know how to comprehend the market.”

L14

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Bottled joy: (clockwise) One of Rooh Afza’s bottling plants in Manesar, Haryana; and print advertisements of the drink from 1970s onwards.

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

1907

Rooh Afza

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

THE SUMMER CHILLER IS NOW TRYING TO STAY RELEVANT FOR ALL SEASONS

Lal salaam B Y M AYANK A USTEN S OOFI mayank.s@livemint.com

···························· t is not a cola and it is not endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan.

It also lacks ready-to-drink convenience. Forty years older than independent India, it is still going strong.

Rooh Afza, the scarlet-hued refresher, was founded by a drug maker called Abdul Majeed in Old Delhi in 1907. This classic summer sharbat has survived Partition, the licence raj, economic reforms, carbonated drinks and tetra-pack juices. An old newspaper ad for this drink says, “When the motor car was on its way in and the horse buggy on its way out, Sharbat Rooh Afza was there.”

Now that the soot-spouting motor car is on its way out and clean, cool hybrids are on their way in, Rooh Afza is still here.

“Every year, we sell 2 crore (20 million) bottles,” says Abdul Majeed, director of Hamdard (Wakf) Laboratories (India), the Delhi-based manufacturer of the sharbat. “We have seen a 20% increase in sales in the past four years.” Majeed is the great-grandson of Hakeem Abdul Majeed, Hamdard’s founder.

Like any lasting brand, Rooh Afza has passed through moments of anxiety. “There was a drop in sales in the late

I

1990s and early 2000s, and our share of the throat declined,” says Tarundeep Singh Rana, general manager, marketing, Hamdard.

“Consumers were taken in by carbonated drinks and the Frootis of the world. Our brand needed to be reinvented and refreshed. We started new campaigns, got (actor) Juhi Chawla as our brand ambassador and established connections with resident welfare associations in cities across north India. Today, our drives have borne fruit. In the `400 crore market of powdered soft drinks and liquid concentrates, Rooh Afza’s share is 50%.”

It is no exaggeration to say that the older generations have grown up with Rooh Afza moments. “I first had Rooh Afza when I was a five-year-old,” says Pushpesh Pant, author of the voluminous India: The Cookbook. “It was gifted to my mother by her friend from Delhi, who was visiting our home in Mukteshwar. In just one sip, I tasted melon, pineapple and orange. There was a trace of rose and a hint of sandalwood. I found the sharbat to be a beautiful amalgam of traditional flavours and aromas.”

The absence of artificial flavours, fat and cholesterol in the drink have become its USP in media campaigns. Promoted as “the healthy alternative”, the print ads of the sharbat with “natural cooling herbs” ask us to “enjoy it without any fear”. “Consumers’ consciousness towards natural products is increasing and there are rising concerns about artificial preservatives in food products,” says Rana. “We tapped into the opportunity to stake claim to the natural refresher space.”

Priced at `105, the 700ml glass bottle is identifiable on the grocer’s shelves with its neck rings and a label showing a bouquet of carrots, mint leaves, white water lilies and other flowers and herbs.

The sharbat’s 22 constituents include spinach, watermelon, endive, khas-khas grass, coriander seed and the distillate of Rosa damascena, or the damask rose, which comes from the rose farms of Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh.

Hamdard’s headquarters in

Delhi border the Walled City. A giant banner of a Rooh Afza bottle dominates its grey front. “We produce more than 600 products and have an annual turnover of `400 crore,” says Majeed. “Almost half of it comes from Rooh Afza.” The other Hamdard brands might lack the syrup’s star power, but down the decades a few have built their own consumer fan following—Safi for clear skin, Cinkara for energy, Roghan Badam Shirin for hair, and Pachnol for acidity.

However, it is Rooh Afza that is as familiar in Lucknow as it is in Multan and Chittagong. Its geographical expansion mirrors the cataclysmic political transformations of the subcontinent. Following Partition, the founder’s elder son stayed in India, but his younger son moved to Pakistan and raised a new Hamdard from two rooms in Karachi. Exoticizing itself as the “Summer drink of the East”, Rooh Afza in Pakistan tastes exactly the same as its Indian counterpart. After East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, the property in Dhaka was transferred to a local entrepreneur, who carried on the legacy that began in Old Delhi’s Lal Kuan.

Hakeem Abdul Majeed included Rooh Afza in his first list of drugs in 1908. A drink made to treat illnesses like heat stroke, dehydration and diarrhoea, Rooh Afza’s Persian name means “one that enhances the spirit and uplifts the soul”. Earlier, when there was only a single factory in Old Delhi, Rooh Afza bottles were filled manually and the labels pasted by hand. Today, there is one bottling plant in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, and two in Manesar, Haryana, where the bottles are filled by a high-speed, fully automated rotary filling machine.

“One of our challenges is to prolong shelf-life usage beyond summer months and get lapsed users back to the fold,” says Rana.

“So we are aggressively pushing it as an additive and taste-maker, which it always was.”

In fact, many of us might remember our mothers adding a spoon or two of Rooh Afza to homemade ice creams, milkshakes, yogurts, custards and

FOUNDER Hakeem Abdul Majeed TYPE OF COMPANY Trust KEY PRODUCTS Rooh Afza, Safi, Cinkara, Roghan Badam Shirin, Pachnol WHERE TO BUY Most grocery stores SUCCESS MANTRA Natural ingredients

kheers. In 2009, Hamdard commissioned cookbook author Nita Mehta to devise 30 recipes inspired by the drink. The Relishing Recipes From Rooh Afza, a bottle-shaped booklet, has testimonials from women thanking the syrup for pleasing crotchety mothers-in-law and impressing kitty party guests.

“We are well-entrenched in the home with the kids, the elderly and the home-makers,” says Hadayat Islam, the brand manager at Hamdard. “Our challenge is to get the youth in college canteens and shopping malls. The generation that grew up in an India of the 1970s and 1980s had fewer choices and so it was easier for Rooh Afza to establish a relationship. But today, there are so many brands. If we don’t catch the attention of the milkshy, cola-loving pre-teens, we might risk missing out on tomorrow’s market.”

While “it never crossed the

mind” of the sharbat-makers even in their darkest moments to tweak the recipe, they are trying to adapt to modern times by experimenting with the packaging. This year, for the first time in its history, Rooh Afza is being sold in plastic bottles at select stores in Hyderabad and Bangalore. “It’s a pilot project and we will introduce those bottles nationwide only if they click with consumers,” says Islam.

Hamdard is also toying with Rooh Afza dispensing machines, one of which can be seen at the headquarters. In March, Rooh Afza’s new TV ad, in which a young family of four is bonding over carom and the sharbat, had a peppy number performed by playback singer Sunidhi Chauhan.

Adman Piyush Pandey feels Rooh Afza does not need to place itself alongside multinational soft drinks. “Rooh Afza is cool in its own way,” he says. “A traditional drink that has stayed relevant, it is one of those rare brands that has a hold over consumers not because of marketing but because of its product.”

In the white-hot months of May and June, the sharbat’s maximum daily production reaches 225,000 bottles.

In this season, Rooh Afza vendors are seen, among other places, in Old Delhi, in front of the Sufi shrine of Sarmad Shaheed, the walls of which are as blood-red as the drink sold outside. Walking in the intense heat, thirsty pilgrims are taken aback by the sight of a block of melting ice kept over a large vessel filled with the sharbat. Sweaty hands tremble on touching the surface of the chilled glass, wet with condensation. The first few drops go in, barely registering their presence in the dry mouth. A few moments later, the heat recedes. It’s magic.

L15

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

THIS FAMILY­OWNED SHOP HAS BEEN STITCHING UNIFORMS AND CIVVIES FOR THE ARMED FORCES FOR 77 YEARS. TODAY, THEY REMAIN CONFIDENT OF SURVIVING THE ASSAULT OF READY­MADES

A common thread INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

SHANKAR MOURYA/MINT

B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN

1935

Bombay Tailoring Shop

arun.j@livemint.com

····························· hen war broke out in 1962, Jagdish Narayan Loya felt the urgent call of his nation. He was then studying law in Indore, but returned home 25km south to Mhow to prepare for battle.

The fight on hand for the Loyas was one of deadline. Since the country and the army were unprepared for the sudden act of aggression from China, the family-owned Bombay Tailoring Shop was inundated with orders for army uniforms. Jagdish plunged into the business.

Fifty years down the line, the 71-year-old remembers that period being one of the shop’s most profitable, one which never gave him an opportunity to regret his decision to abandon law for suits.

“When the war broke out, there was huge business because there was huge shortage,” says Jagdish. “There was a spurt in recruitment into the National Cadet Corps (NCC). They ordered one lakh (100,000) shirts and pants each. We won the tender in Delhi to make them, but we were not ready at all. We hired tailors from neighbouring villages, got them trained, housed them nearby, and finished the work on time.”

The stitches in time sealed the shop’s enduring relationship with the men in uniform.

Bombay Tailoring Shop, on Simrole Road, one of little Mhow’s (pronounced “Mahoo” by locals) busiest streets, has stood in the same place since 1935.

There isn’t a single quiet moment at the shop—not because the place is flooded with customers, but because vehicles honk at everything, including speed breakers, on the street outside. If not that, a series of loud processions pass by, of saffronclad devotees returning from Omkareshwar, dancing to, nostalgically, Rajesh Khanna’s “Jai Jai Shiv Shankar”.

Jagdish sits with his cousin Purshottam Das, 64, behind a desk in the shop amid bundles of cloth piled everywhere. The brothers say even some of the wooden shelves have not been changed since they were first built. Two wooden chairs too have survived; Jagdish says these are the most comfortable.

A solitary salesman waits impatiently, often fidgeting with a tape, occasionally folding an already folded roll of trouser material or fetching tea in cups the size of a thumb. A door at one end of the shop leads to a small storeroom where many identical dark grey suits are piled up on stands, ready to be sent out. Another door leads to a small warehouse filled with bundles of cloth on the floor and on racks. The last door, padlocked from inside, leads to the tailoring workshop where three-four men are hard at work, cutting khaki cloth.

It is pouring in Mhow; Mohammad Rafi suitably croons from a radio that looks as old as the shop: “Yeh mausam bheega bheega hai…”

Bombay Tailoring gets the bulk of its orders from the Armed Forces, paramilitary forces—the

W

FOUNDERS Kanhailal and Daulal Loya INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

TYPE OF COMPANY Privately held INDEPENDENCE DAY KEY SPECIAL

PRODUCTS Cotton, terrycot, linen and wool

WHERE TO BUY Only at the Bombay Tailoring Shop, Mhow

Stitch in time: Jagdish Loya (standing, right) and Purshottam Das (in the light blue shirt) at their workshop behind the Bombay Tailoring Shop in Mhow, near Indore.

Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)—home guards and Madhya Pradesh police. Civilian orders are few but not far between.

The shop has 60-70 tailors who work on a contractual basis—they come to the store, cut the cloth and take it home to stitch. “These are artistes,” says Purshottam, “not those robotic, mechanical tailors who work in ready-made shops. There is skill involved here; it’s not an assembly line. But it’s difficult to get tailors these days, with increased education and the lure of a steady income from those ready-made shops.”

Times have, of course, changed. While 50 years ago, a tailor got 50 paise for stitching a shirt, they now earn `60. But then there were 350 tailors working for the shop.

There is still one leader to the set-up, approximately 85-yearold Manu Master, who has been in service since 1952 and has not come to work today because he cannot ride his scooter in the rain.

Jagdish’s father Kanhailal and his brother Daulal, Purshottam’s father, came to Mhow in 1935 from nearby Dewas.

Mhow, a military cantonment of the British, already had a bunch of tailors, the most well-known among them being Moolchand and Sons.

Chotelal Moolchand’s shop on Main Street, started sometime in the 1860s, was also called Royal Tailors because of the many maharajas who used to visit, according to Denzil Lobo’s book A Town Called MHOW. The shop still exists, renamed Vardhaman Handloom, and is run by the same family, but is now into home furnishings.

The shop the Loya brothers set up started servicing the army by making uniforms.

Jagdish says in those days there were a number of uniforms—from separate ones for summer and winter to dinner jackets and something called a monkey jacket.

The shop even employed an Englishman to help deal with British soldiers, and since cloth was imported from Bombay (now Mumbai), it was his idea to name the shop Bombay Tailoring.

Today, Jagdish, his brother Kamal Narayan and Purshottam

SUCCESS MANTRA Politeness work at the shop. The oldest, Daulal’s son Damodar Lal, has an engineering business. There are certain traditions that the brothers have maintained.

While the rest of Mhow and most of Indore is shut on Mondays, Bombay Tailoring shuts on Thursdays, besides the 3 hours it remains closed every afternoon as the brothers go home to lunch and nap. “The British soldiers used to come out

for recreation on Sundays,” says Jagdish. “There was no TV then but they had a ‘picture day’ on Thursdays, so no one would come out. So we remained shut on Thursdays and decided not to change that.”

The brothers believe their future is sound because uniforms will always be stitched and cannot be “ready-made”. Their sons, one each, have opened a TVS twowheeler showroom next door. But the fathers are not concerned about their current lack of interest in this business.

“The key is to always stick together,” says Purshottam. “Our fathers got the chance to open more shops but they abandoned it after a brief attempt because they did not want to live apart. If we had opened separately, we would have done well, but without peace of mind. We would have just chased wealth, like others.”

Purshottam is also hopeful the next generation will modernize the business. “We have been unable to do something new. For example, if we could do readymade clothes…”

Jagdish adds: “Just the other day I went to the mall in Indore.

The ready-made clothes are so expensive and, frankly, they frighten me.”

L16

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM RAJESH CHADDHA

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

BEFORE MUMBAIKARS WENT DIGITAL AND TRIGGER­HAPPY, THEY MADE A BEELINE TO THIS KALBADEVI INSTITUTION FOR THE FAMILY PORTRAIT

20/20 vision

1910s

Indian Art Studio

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

FOUNDER Jairoop Narain Chaddha INDEPENDENCE TYPE OF DAY SPECIALt COMPANY

Proprietorship

KEY PRODUCTS Restoration, canvas paintings, outdoor, digital, film studio photography

B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· ome years ago, a man WHERE TO BUY walked into the Indian Art Studio with a photograph.

Indian Art Studio, It was a studio portrait of him, Chhayachitrakar Chaddha aged 2, taken with his father at Chowk, Kalbadevi, Mumbai the studio decades ago. He now (www.indianartstudio.com) wanted to be photographed with his own two-year-old son. But INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE DAY DAY could the photographers recreate SUCCESS INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL the old photo? The proprietors MANTRA DAY said yes. With the same SPECIAL Both traditional furniture? Yes. In black and and up­to­date white? Yes, and with the very photography services same mount embossed with the Photo finish: (from left) Sanjay, Rajesh and Anil Chaddha; and three studio’s name if he wished it, generations of Chaddhas outside their studio in the 1970s. they answered him.

Over the near-century of its commercial, industrial and The present Chaddhas are all According to the Chaddhas, existence, the Indian Art Studio in advertising photography, photographers, graduates from the studio is over 95 years old. It south Mumbai has accumulated modelling portfolios, event and the Sir JJ School of Art. “When stands at the intersection of generations of studio bric-a-brac. function photography. But they my great-grandfather started Princess Street and Kalbadevi In their underground studio, remain, first and foremost, the this, he would not have thought Road, almost at the former couples can get their photographs city’s oldest surviving makers of I would be into the business border between Mumbai’s black taken in the same antique love portrait photographs. Anil, Sanjay today,” says Sanjay, 44. “Even I and white town. In February seat in which their parents had and Rajesh Chaddha, brothers might have had doubts at a time 2009, the shop was done a signal honeymoon portraits shot. who are Indian Art Studio’s when studios were closing honour when the Graduates can lean on the same fourth generation of proprietors, down, selling off their Brihanmumbai Municipal elaborately carved stands, holding are in the business of taking equipment and backdrops. I Corporation (BMC) named the the darkly polished wooden pictures that will be remembered. remember when stacks of old junction Chhayachitrakar books that their grandmothers “Eighty per cent of my pictures photographs were going for Chaddha Chowk. clutched upon leaving college. are about people,” says Rajesh. nothing at Chor Bazaar. But we The Chaddhas don’t think Still, the present is ubiquitous.

Three generations of fabulously are here to make history live.” studio photography is a dying The studio’s flashlights stand mustachioed Chaddhas gaze Technology changes, but the profession. To their mind, the beneath the old 1,000-watt impassively upon the new Chaddhas choose to add new world will always need tungsten lights on the ceiling that century from their portraits hung technology to their array of photographers because even in a photographers once used for their over the front desk. From behind services rather than give up on future when everyone will have portraits. Behind the wood panels glass, generations of unsmiling older forms. “Most studios have 40 MP camera phones, the artist’s are small offices with top-of-theBombayites in their gowns and turned totally digital,” says eye for the image will be prized. line computers and design garas, dhotis and suits, look back Sanjay. “Maybe they don’t have The social rituals of equipment, and technicians at visitors. In the processing the knowledge that we have photography have changed; working on digital photography studios, their present-day acquired physically. We have people don’t queue up around that bursts with colour and light. successors stand, sit and wave. worked in darkrooms ourselves. the block on festival days to have On its website, the studio Sometimes, they aren’t even We’ve seen how film is processed. their pictures taken any more, as advertises services as varied as looking at the camera.

We used to wash photographs.” they once did in their

S

grandfather’s day. But the need for an artist’s eye remains.

“Nowadays a lot of people invite us home to have their family portraits taken,” says Rajesh, 42. “We do a lot of matrimonial photography, children’s portraits.”

In 2003, they started doing videography and digital photographs. But there are always people coming back, family albums in hand. Rajesh says the studio executes twothree orders for restoration work on old photographs and paintings every day.

The Indian Art Studio has thrived through British rule and Indian, in Bombay state and Maharashtra, from box cameras (which they still store in the underground studio) to Photoshop. Their exceptional commitment to history may be a key to their success: While keeping up with the times, they have chosen to run the studio themselves, and kept their photography services going even through the 1980s and 1990s, dark times for traditional photo studios which, unable to compete with compact cameras and the rise of amateur photography, shut down or converted to processing labs.

“If you are a professional you will be married to your camera,” says Rajesh about why they never took those decisions. “The labs started closing down when digital photography came in. But the camera always remains.”

Their studio is located on prime property, but they were uninterested in becoming landlords. “Many people want to tell us what to do,” says Anil, 46, candidly. “‘How have you kept this?’ How? We treat it as our temple.”

In those photos on the wall, in that spotless old studio with all 33 brass switches of its original lights still functional, is a record that is like a photograph itself: a visual memory of the last century.

1700s Thaim Trading Co. Ltd

FROM VASCO DA GAMA TO THE LESSER MODERN DAY TRADERS, THE DHOW MAKERS OF MANDVI HAVE BEEN INTEGRAL TO THE CONQUEST OF THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA

Always up for sail NIRAV MISTRY/MINT

B Y M AULIK P ATHAK maulik.p@livemint.com

···························· he country-craft makers of Mandvi, the ancient port city in Kutch, Gujarat, have mastered the 400-year-old art so well that they sometimes put their plans on paper after the product is seaworthy.

Naushad Thaim, the 24-yearold managing director of Thaim Trading Co. Llc., says a layout design is mandatory for registration. With about 100 sailing vessels under its management, Thaim is one of the largest firms along the coast of the Rukmavati river, adjacent to Mandvi port.

There has been a lull in activity here recently. In a normal year, this coast has about 40 new boats pitched in the dry docks, primed to be carved from imported Malaysian wood. Now, there are only about a dozen boats here.

Two of these vessels belong to Thaim, and tower to the height of four-storey buildings.

Developed under Maharao Shri Khengarji-I in the 16th century, Mandvi was once the principal port of Kutch. According to local legend, when Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route from Europe to India in 1498, Kanji Malam, a sailor from Mandvi, showed him the way. In

FOUNDER Ishak Sidhik Thaim TYPE OF COMPANY Partnership KEY PRODUCTS Country crafts, sold on approval of the regulatory authorities

T

WHERE TO BUY Thaim Trading Co. Llc., Bundar Road, Mandvi, Kutch, Gujarat (02834222880)

Seafarers: Naushad Thaim in front of the vessels his firm is building. the 18th century, merchants at the Mandvi port, including Thaim’s forefathers, shared ownership of a 400-vessel trading fleet that travelled to the Malabar coast, the Persian Gulf and east Africa.

Thaim’s forefathers designed boats before they entered merchant shipping. Thaim’s generation has moved on to management. He has created an in-house team of local experts for design work. The company, incorporated in 1990, is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with most of its operations in Gujarat. It is today the biggest shipping firm in Mandvi, with an annual turnover of about `100 crore.

On average it takes about two-

three years and `1-2 crore to prepare one country craft with an average cargo capacity of around 1,000 tonnes. Each employs 50 labourers in its construction.

The country crafts, or dhows in Arabic, each with a travel speed of 10 nautical miles an hour, or 18.5km per hour, have been the target of pirates for ages; they have used them to capture bigger vessels.

This has hurt the reputation of the industry in Kutch, says Thaim, who is also president of the Kutch Vahanvati Association. Business has been down by at least 50% in the last two years due to competition from container vessels.

In 2008, two wooden cargo boats made in Mandvi were cap-

SUCCESS MANTRA Capitalize on established trade links, provide cargo services at competitive rates tured by Somalian pirates. In March 2010, the Directorate General of Shipping imposed a ban on sailing vessels plying south or west of Salalah near Jamnagar. Mandvi shipbuilders became cautious, preferring to sell vessels only in Mandvi, Veraval and Porbandar.

“Boat owners now transport goods for other parties. The ban has restricted us from venturing into Yemen, the Red Sea and African countries, which were major business centres for us,” says Ismail Jat, a captain with Thaim.

Post-independence, the family had seen an enhanced opportunity in Mandvi. “We mainly transported dates for merchants in the UAE and India. During Partition, the Karachi port went to Pakistan.

There were only two ports on the western coast of India, and Mandvi got a major chunk of cargo.

This is when we bought more vessels. We got a lot of business by transporting perishable goods like onions, watermelons and mangoes,” says Thaim.

Then, in the 1960s, container cargoes were mechanized and wind power began to be assisted by a diesel engine.

In 1985 the family, which owned a few boats of 50-250 tonnes, began making larger boats of capacities exceeding 500 tonnes. About then, container vessels became faster with technology. And newer ports like Kandla and Mundra affected business.

Thaim got their company registered as an import-export firm about four years ago. “We could have gone for larger vessels, but that would mean hiring people with special skills, which would leave our employees jobless. This way, we can keep our people employed,” Thaim says.

Today Thaim is the leading exporter of dates to India and a leading importer of soybean, maize, barley and sugar. www.livemint.com Read about Shivji Bhuda Fofindi, a Mandvi­based model ship maker, at www.livemint.com/shivji.htm

L17

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

BY STAYING TRUE TO ITS CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE LEAN YEARS OF AN IMPORT BAN ON INSTRUMENTS, FURTADOS IS REAPING THE BENEFITS OF A NATIONAL BOOM INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

The harpsichord store ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

1865

Furtados

M

String theory: (from top) Violins for sale; the Mumbai store, Furtados’ first, is a hub for budding musi­ cians; and owner Christopher Fur­ tado at the Panjim store.

RAKESH MUNDYE/MINT

B Y V IVEK M ENEZES ···························· usicians in the subcontinent were using INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE DAY DAY so-called “foreign” INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL instruments, such as the violin, DAY much before the sitar was SPECIAL invented—even before what is now commonly known as Hindustani music first emerged in north India.

By the 16th century, there were innumerable skilled native users of these instruments accompanying the church choirs of the Portuguese possessions arrayed on the west coast—from Goa to Bassein (now Vasai) to Diu. When the Italian voyager Guiseppe Sebastiani attended a sung mass in 1683—seven choirs accompanied by “flutes, shawms, cornettoes, viola de gambas and harpsichords”— he marvelled: “I felt I was in Rome. I could not believe how proficient these Canarese are in this music, how years old, John Anthony Gomes specialized in for more than 150 source of all the goodwill that we well they perform it, and with must have already burnished a years. Today the company oper- now enjoy”. what facility.” stellar reputation because the ates 25 retail outlets around the Christopher also tells me with The music largely stayed in Goan tailors of the neighbourcountry, from Dimapur to visible pride that 90% of Furtados church, however, until the Napo- hood pooled together the necesAmritsar to Puducherry. sales (many of which are bigleonic war, when the British sary funds, and backed him.

The family-owned company is ticket) are strictly on the basis of moved in to occupy Goa on the The decades thereafter unravalso the local agent for the Trinity MRP, or maximum retail price. excuse of fortifying their Portuelled like a roller-coaster ride for College London music education “It is true we don’t offer disguese allies against Tipu Sultan, Furtados Music India Pvt. Ltd. programmes. Then there is a counts on price,” he tells me with who was threatening collusion India was then subject to misFurtados School of Music, a Fura smile, “but there are also no with the French to take over the placed cultural nationalism. The tados Institute of Piano Technoldiscounts on service, and no distiny colony. pioneering maestro Anthony ogy, and another new division counts on quality.” Furtados has It was just 1865 when Bernard Gonsalves was officially informed that specializes in music (compo- built an intensely loyal customer Xavier Furtado first opened the that someone like him with a sition) sales. base by reciprocating the near-fadoors of the now legendary BX “foreign name” playing “foreign In addition, the Gomes siblings natical allegiance.

Furtado & Sons in the old Jer music” (actually sophisticated are proud of their annual festival It is a most unusual value to Mahal building in Dhobi Talao, raga-based orchestral fusion) Con Brio: The John Gomes nurture in the 21st century, and Mumbai, and began selling and would never represent India.

Memorial Piano Competition & I saw evidence of it on a counter servicing instruments to his Similarly, imports of all musical Festival, which each year Goan countrymen who had setinstruments were summarily brings an increasingly tled in the surrounding localities: banned for decades. impressive line-up to Cavel, Dabul, Khotachiwadi.

Shabby second-hand pianos Mumbai’s National The British personnel stabegan to cost as much as cars.

Centre for the Performing tioned in Goa during that period Gonsalves left India in disgust.

Arts (NCPA). This July’s of more than a decade found the Meanwhile, Furtados struggled edition featured several native converts ideal to serve to keep the flame alive—supA-list international permany of their needs in India: The porting music education, refurformers, including cooks could handle beef, the tai- bishing old instruments—as pianist Paul Stewart and lors knew how to cut coats, the responsibility for the business Mumbai-born soprano bakers managed excellent loaves, steadily shifted to the four Patricia Rozario. and a limitless supply of skilled Gomes siblings.

Leaning over the desk violinists, trumpeters and other At the end of the 1980s, folin his modestly appointed musicians constituted bands and lowing heart trouble, John office at the Panjim, Goa, orchestras to play the familiar Gomes passed the baton to branch of his family’s music of home.

Anthony, Christopher, Nonabel company, Christopher With the Goan economy in and Joseph just in time for them says, “All of today’s benesevere doldrums throughout the to catch the seemingly unstopfits have come to Furta19th century, young men of the pable wave of demand dos because we kept the territory were compelled to find unleashed right after that absurd faith, kept working hard work outside. This is when thou- ban on “foreign instruments” to satisfy the needs of our sands of them picked up their was lifted in 1991. customers all through the church-choir instruments, With silly old hang-ups about lean years of the import quickly figured out how to play “foreign music” fading fast, Fur- ban.” That service ideal of God Save the Queen, and headed tados has now dramatically strict loyalty to the cusout to seek their musical fortunes repositioned itself to nurture, tomer’s needs is at the in the cities of British India, and support and reap terrific benefits heart of Furtados’ value the colonies beyond. from the massively increased system, which ChristoAs author Naresh Fernandes interest and demand for the pher describes as “our has outlined at length in his mar- instruments and music it has trademark, our USP, the vellous Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age, many of these musicians headed straight to Bombay, where they were heralded as talented “Italians of the East”, and soon became ubiquitous performers in the city’s many hotels, clubs, reviews and restaurants.

The store flourished through the last decades of the Raj, but the Furtado family eventually ran into financial difficulties. In 1952, a young man, who’d been buying and selling religious supplies to make a living, learnt that the store was in liquidation. Just 25

FOUNDER Bernard Xavier Furtado TYPE OF COMPANY Partnership KEY PRODUCTS Everything musical, from pianos to percussion WHERE TO BUY 25 stores nationwide SUCCESS MANTRA No discount on quality, service, and logically, on price outside Christopher’s office while walking out after our meeting. There stood an array of plaster statues and religious supplies, all at extraordinarily low prices that couldn’t possibly yield profit margins of more than a few rupees—certainly not enough to justify the space they occupied. But this trade has been part of their family business from the beginning, and that is enough for Furtados and the Gomes family. They have learnt what it takes to keep a good thing going for decades.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L18

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

A SMALL WEST PAKISTAN SHOP BECAME A CHAIN OF BAKERIES IN NORTH INDIA IN THE POST­INDEPENDENCE YEARS. THEIR HANDMADE, EGGLESS BAKES REMAIN POPULAR TO DATE

1921

Frontier Biscuit Factory

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

Tricks of the treat B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY

tually named the shop Frontier

favourite pastimes was to visit

Biscuit Factory. “I don’t other bakery shops to see how INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE ··························· DAY remember how the name came DAYthey stack their products, INDEPENDENCE what SPECIAL hen Munshi Ram Sethi about; but I named it in 1947 SPECIAL new biscuits they made, etc.” DAY seema.c@livemint.com

W

left Hoti Mardan, west Pakistan, for Delhi in 1947, he was 17. He had never imagined that 65 years later, he would be the chairman and managing director of 64 shops that sell biscuits made by two processing units that his family runs. As a young boy, he spent long hours in the small biscuitbakery shop his father Mangal Sain ran. “It had no name in those days,” says Munshi Ram, of the shop his father had set up in 1921 in Pakistan. Their bestselling treats then were atta biscuits, namkeen-zeera biscuits and rusks. Now Frontier’s bestsellers are kaju-pista biscuits, wholewheat biscuits, rusks and chocolate-chip biscuits.

From 10-15kg of handmade, eggless biscuits made daily until the early 1950s, to 7,500kg per day in 2012, Frontier Biscuit Factory Pvt. Ltd has come a long way. Today the company supplies sweet and salted biscuits, rusks, khatai and cakes across Delhi, Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

“But biskut (as he pronounces it) eating habits until the 1970s were not what they are today.

Not many people consumed them and the customers who did wanted freshly baked batches made from raw materials they provided. We used to be paid for the labour of making the biscuits,” Munshi Ram says. They used to be paid 50 paise per kg for baking these pepawale biscuits in the 1970s.

When the family moved to Delhi, Mangal Sain decided to set up a biscuit-bakery shop in Sadar Bazar, just like the one he had left behind. Munshi Ram says it was he who even-

when we moved to Sadar Bazar.

My father did not object to it.”

At 82, he may no longer be taking day-to-day decisions for the company, but Munshi Ram insists on dressing up every day to visit the flagship factory in Bahadurgarh, Haryana, a 45minute car ride from his home in Delhi’s Rajouri Garden area.

Ask him, however, how many shops Frontier Biscuit owns today and he turns to his two sons, Pawan and Sanjeev Sethi.

“When bauji started the shop again with our grandfather in India, they had just two or three workers, and knew five-six biscuit recipes,” says Pawan, 54, a thirdgeneration entrepreneur who is now a director in the company like his younger bother Sanjeev, 48. The company now bakes 48 varieties of biscuits, cakes, khatais and rusks, including three “no added sugar” varieties.

Like his father, Pawan started early and was given charge of accounts in 1977, a job he still manages. “My grandfather had retired from the bakery early and my father handled everything on his own until I joined. One of my earliest memories is of making handwritten posters on A4-size paper sheets about our shop with my father and sticking it around the neighbourhood.” Later, when the company started advertising in newspapers, Munshi Ram chose the Hindi publication Vir Arjun and Urdu daily Pratap.

Pawan says his father took Bata as his business model.

Frontier biscuits sell from shops that are either owned by the company or are exclusive franchises. “He was always against the idea of selling our products from a kirana dukaan (general store). One of his

Sanjeev, who shared this SPECIAL passion for innovation, joined the production department in 1984. Forever eager to introduce new biscuits, he wanted to bake their own version of Parle-like glucose biscuits, which eventually did not work out.

Sanjeev tells us how he invented the Milk-Elaichi Cookie. “We got a lot of elaichi (cardamom) one Diwali and I decided to take this to the factory and use them with a batch of biscuits. I got the elaichi finely ground and when it was used with batter, we got a flavourful biscuit,” he says.

One of the toughest phases for the family was in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Delhi government banned neighbourhood bakeries from baking in their premises because smoke from the woodfire ovens was a pollutant. All the bakeries and food industries had to move their units to the Lawrence Road area. “Bauji got a piece of land in that area but production and profits did not increase for a while after that. In those days, our daily sale used be around `800-1,000 and profit was about 10% of the sale.” This was also a period when raw materials such as maida (refined flour), sugar, ghee were not easily and freely available.

“Bauji still talks about a time when almost daily, he had to go from Rajouri Garden or Sadar Bazar to Modi Flour Mills in Okhla to get materials loaded in a truck,” explains Rajan Sethi, 28, the fourth generation of Sethis, who joined as chief, business development, in 2007. Now, of course, all the raw materials can be procured on phone.

Sanjeev says his father had only two options at the time: sell

FOUNDER Munshi Ram Sethi TYPE OF COMPANY Pvt. Ltd KEY PRODUCTS Eggless, handmade bakery products including biscuits, cakes, ‘khatais’ and rusks WHERE TO BUY Frontier Biscuit shopping zones across Delhi, Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan SUCCESS MANTRA Selling only from company­owned or franchise stores. Adhering to the core competency of making eggless, handmade bakery products

the business or be even more determined to set up more shops.

Munshi Ram opted for the second. The second Frontier shop opened in Rajouri Garden by late 1981 and the third one in Model Town. They then opened shops in Paschim Vihar, Ashok Vihar, Kamla Nagar and Tagore Garden. “By the time I joined, people had started approaching us for ‘agency’ or a franchise of Frontier Biscuit,” recalls Sanjeev, and the first franchise opened in Janakpuri in 1992. Munshi Ram insisted franchises would not

Milestones: (clockwise from far left) An old pamphlet released around Rakhi; an advertisement on a DTC bus; and the opening of the Model Town store in Delhi.

sell anything except Frontier products.

Although some Frontier shopping zones still sell loose products today, by and large the company is moving to a prepackaged format. “Over the years, people have started buying more biscuits at festival times since these products have a higher shelf life (Frontier biscuits have a four-month shelf life) in comparison to mithai or other sweets. Since we are a company based in the north, Diwali, Rakhi, Lohri are high-sale periods for us,” says Rajan.

In 1989, Frontier Biscuit became a private limited company and had a turnover of almost `40 lakh. By 2011-12, the turnover was `36 crore.

One of the initial changes Rajan introduced was to apply for an ISO 202000 certification, which eventually came in 2010.

“It was a huge challenge. Since these are handmade products, we had to train our staff to maintain hygiene, modify our factories by installing more air ducts and introduce new inventory measuring systems.

Quality was always important but I also wanted to make our process more professional and standardized,” says Rajan.

As more and more biscuit brands make their way to the grocery shops, it is difficult to understand how Frontier can grow if it continues with its sale-direct-from-store-only policy. But Pawan, Sanjeev and Rajan are not worried. “Ours is a niche product. Britannia or Parle are not our competition.

The real change through the 1980s and 1990s was the introduction of new flavours all the time. In the last five years or so, customers have become health-conscious. Now, the challenge is to ensure they get what they want,” says Rajan.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Three generations: The new Frontier mascot; and (extreme right, clockwise) Rajan (in blue shirt), Sanjeev, Munshi Ram and Pawan Sethi at Frontier’s Bahadurgarh processing unit.

L19

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

THEY BEGAN WHEN ICE CREAM WASN’T EVEN AN INDUSTRY AND ARE STILL AROUND THE TOP OF THE CONE

Freeze­frame B Y M AULIK P ATHAK

1907

Vadilal

maulik.p@livemint.com

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

FOUNDER Vadilal Gandhi PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

JAYDIP BHATT/MINT

INDEPENDENCE TYPE OF DAY SPECIALt COMPANY

Listed

···························· KEY PRODUCTS small restaurant in a noisy corner of Teen Gourmet, Badabite, Flingo, Darwaja in Ahmedabad Six products under the Ice still bears the sign “Vadilal Trooper range for children Soda Fountain”—105 years (Jelly Peel, Smiley later.

Launcher, Double Strike— From selling sodas in 1907, the Gandhis have travelled chocolate and strawberry, four generations with their White Night and Thunder brand Vadilal, to their new Stik) corporate office in Navrangpura, less than 5km from their WHERE TO BUY first outlet.

INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE DAY DAY “My forefather had Available nationwide at INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL SPECIAL imported furniture from Italy DAY Happinezz Parlours and and we were among the first SPECIAL through dealers to get an electric connection Varied scoops: (clockwise from above) Devanshu (left) and Rajesh Gandhi in the city,” says Rajesh Ganof Vadilal Industries; and flavours range from chocolate to kulfis.

SUCCESS dhi, managing director of Vadilal Industries, the flagship over his grandfather’s busicream was not seen as an MANTRA firm of the Vadilal Group. ness in 1942, turning it into industry then. Everybody said Innovation in products, Initially, founder Vadilal an over `400 crore empire by we would go bankrupt. In the flavours, presentation Gandhi used to make ice the financial year 2011-12 first year of operations, our cream by the traditional Kothi with the support of his factory got flooded. But we method, using a hand-operbrother Lakshman Gandhi have never looked back,” ated machine to churn milk and other family members.

Rajesh says.

“They even sent a muscleman with other ingredients, ice The family says they did By the late 1970s, Kwality, to our office to threaten us. and salt. consider changing the brand Joy and Vadilal had a major We were told that the sea is They even offered home name Vadilal in the 1980s. share of the ice-cream indusrough and it was time for us delivery, with ice creams “We decided to stick to Vaditry that was opening up to jump,” Rajesh recalls, packed in thermos boxes. lal because when we looked to multinationals. refusing to divulge the name In 1926, they imported icearound we found that a lot The fact that Vadilal’s ice of the company. Vadilal cream making machines, pay- of brands named after their cream is vegetarian helped decided to go in for nationing custom duty of 300-350%. founders, like Mafatlal and them remain ahead. They wide expansion.

Vadilal, which had expanded Ford, were successful,” even ran ad campaigns in the In the early 1990s, there to four ice-cream shops says Rajesh. late 1970s suggesting their ice was a split in the family, with before independence, became In 1972-73, the company creams could be consumed Shailesh Gandhi, brother of popular for its cassata ice had 8-10 outlets in Ahmedaeven by people observing a Rajesh and son of Ramchancream, which it introduced in bad. They spent five-six years fast. Rajesh says there were dra, being given a factory in the 1950s. It remained a city consolidating the business. apprehensions in the market Tarapur, Pune, and territorial brand till 1972-73.

The group invested `25 lakh at the time about other icerights in Maharashtra and Ramchandra Gandhi, 86, in 1972 in setting up an icecream makers using gelatin. south India. “Both families chairman of Vadilal Industries cream factory at Pundhra, A multinational company continue to use the same and father of Rajesh, took Gandhinagar district. “Ice tried to buy them out in 1985. brand name but there were

A

territorial restrictions. Today, we are present in 16 states while my brother is in five states,” says Rajesh.

In 1996, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), selling its products under the brand name Amul, captured the market, becoming No. 1 by 2001. Vadilal is the country’s second-largest ice cream brand by sales.

Vadilal has the largest range of ice creams in the country, with more than 150 flavours sold in more than 300 packs and forms. Today, the icecream market in India is estimated at `2,500 crore in the organized sector. Vadilal Industries, which has been growing at about 30% annually for the last 10 years, aims to touch `450 crore this fiscal.

Like “tea tasters”, Vadilal has a core team of in-house “ice-cream experts” who taste 15-20 products a day.

Vadilal introduces one or two products every month while dropping an equal number to “avoid making the product basket unhealthy”, Rajesh says. It has 50,000 dealers across India and 200 Happinezz Parlours, most franchisee outlets.

Vadilal Industries also entered the processed foods industry in the early 1990s and is today one of the largest players in India. Currently, it exports approximately 175 products under the Vadilal Quick Treat and Garden Fresh brands to nearly 45 countries.

THE SEATS THAT MOVIE GOERS HAVE OCCUPIED FOR DECADES HAVE EVOLVED FROM WOOD TO COMFORTABLE CUSHIONED INNOVATIONS. THANK THESE WORKERS

Red hot seats

FOUNDER Munshiram Gulati ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

B Y N ANDINI R AMNATH

1921

Pen Workers

nandini.r@livemint.com

····························· en Workers doesn’t have an official slogan, but if it went with “Giving you that sinking feeling for over 90 years”, it would be wholly appropriate.

The Hypnos-beckoning recliners at the Ebony Lounge at the Big Metro multiplex in south Mumbai were made at a Pen Workers factory. So were the plush seats at the newly opened S2 multiplex, run by the Sathyam Cinemas chain, in the Chennai suburb Perambur. It’s easier to name single-screen theatres and multiplexes in the country that the leading seat manufacturer has not worked with rather than draw up a list of its clients. Pen Workers seats are in Dhulia and Dar es Salaam, as well as at private theatres in the homes of Hindi movie actors Shah Rukh Khan and Sunny Deol.

Anmol Kashmiri, the thirdgeneration proprietor who runs the business along with his brother Mohit, once even met a doctor who had installed Pen Workers seats at her clinic.

The family concern has changed its raw material—from wood to polyurethane—and expanded its business from cinema halls to schools, waiting areas, stadia and restaurants, but its cheery red frontage has been perking up Jaganath Shunkerseth Road in south Mumbai ever since the

P

TYPE OF COMPANY Partnership KEY PRODUCTS Seats for movie theatres, schools, stadia and restaurants WHERE TO BUY Dhobitalao, Mumbai SUCCESS MANTRA Dedication and diversity

Comfort zone: Pen Workers’ Anmol Kashmiri at his office. company was set up in 1921. Parts of the office are built over a stable and a well, which give an idea of the company’s age.

The headquarters has enough space for a demonstration room containing various types of seats that recline, rock and swivel— sometimes all at the same time.

The room is equipped with a screen and doubles up as a private mini auditorium. “I screen Bruce Springsteen concerts for myself here,” Anmol says. “When I am pissed off, when I have production hassles, I come here.”

Seat manufacturing is big business: The company makes close to 40,000 units a year and has supplied to over 2,500 auditoriums in Asia, according to

Anmol. Orders come in from around the country as well as countries like Kenya, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Tanzania.

Pen Workers started off with a small factory in Mazagaon in south Mumbai, and now has one factory each in the north-east and northwest of the city, a factory in China and a branch office in Malaysia.

The company sat out a slump in business during much of the 1980s and 1990s, when audiences preferred to watch films at home on cheaply available, massproduced video cassettes rather than venture out to movie halls.

Few theatres were built during those years, Anmol points out.

“Every business has its ups and downs,” he says. “But no matter

what happened, we resolved to continue with the family business.”

Pen Workers was set up in 1921

by Anmol’s grandfather, Munshiram Gulati, who had migrated to Mumbai the previous year from a village in what is now north-west Pakistan. The company is named after a kind of wood used to make the cinema seats most film goers parked their bottoms on up till the 1960s, when the first cushioned seats made an appearance. Gulati had three daughters, one of whom married Girdhari Lal Kashmiri, a production controller with Guru Dutt Movies. Girdhari Lal had dropped into Gulati’s office to select cinema seats for a sequence for Dutt’s Pyaasa (Kashmiri

appears in a crowd shot in the 1957 movie). He eventually took over the business and recruited his son Anmol on the day the 15-year-old Palm Beach School student finished his Board examinations.

“All my friends went out for a movie, while I went to our factory in Goregaon in a train,” Anmol, 38, says. “I was mighty pissed off then.”

Over time, Anmol became involved to a point where he had differences with his father about modernizing the business. “I want to emphasize that we are very proud of being a family concern,” he says. “If you are a family business, you can compete with anybody in the world. We have the passion and the hard work to continue. Competitors have the funds and the manpower, but this isn’t only about money.”

Pen Workers is now well perched to satiate the changing tastes of movie goers. “Earlier, you had narrow seats and comfort wasn’t important,” Anmol says.

“We have now gone from wooden seats to cushioned seats to pushback seats to recliners. The width of seats has changed too.” The red frontage stays the same, however.

“When our office was recently redone, we said that no matter what will happen, the frontage will remain,” Anmol says.

“I was in Bangalore the other day, and I told somebody I work for Pen Workers. He immediately remembered the sign.”

L20

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

CONGLOMERATES WITH BIGGER MUSCLE HAVE COME AND GONE REPEATEDLY. KALIMARK BUBBLES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

South­side soda INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

B Y K ARTHIKA G OPALAKRISHNAN catered to British expatriates Sakthivel, Rajendran’s eldest ···························· and the Indian elite). When he son, joined the firm at the FOUNDER chance visit to a petty mooted the idea of Chennai unit in 1971 after P.V.S.K. Palaniappan shop in affluent Besant manufacturing a local brand to completing his college Nagar, Chennai, his circle of friends, it was met education. His cousins, K.P.D. brought 30-year-old Deepak INDEPENDENCE with an enthusiastic Rajendran and K.P.D. INDEPENDENCE TYPE OF DAY Chander a portion of response,” says his grandson DAYKrishnamoorthy, began INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL COMPANY unexpected joy recently. While K.P.R. Sakthivel, proprietor, SPECIAL looking after the TirunelveliDAY Pvt. Ltd waiting for his change, he Kali Aerated Water Works, and Tiruchirappalli units in SPECIAL spotted a bottle of Kalimark Chennai, and the eldest 1972 and 1973, respectively.

Bovonto at the store. The member of the family today.

Soundarapandian was in KEY PRODUCTS tangy, grape-flavoured, light With his wife Unnamallai charge of the unit at Bovonto, Solo (lemon), soda drink has remained this Ammal’s help, Palaniappan Kumbakonam while K.P.R. Trio (orange), Ginger Beer, foodie and poker enthusiast’s bought a hand-operated Nageswaran, Sakthivel’s Paneer Lemon, favourite since he first tasted it machine which could inject brother, looked after the unit Frutang (mango) as a boy. gas into water and pressurize in Karaikudi.

“I was so excited to find it in it after 100 turns of the As the volume of business the city. I love the flavour,” he machine’s lever. Three bottles grew, the partners wanted to WHERE TO BUY says. “Though I’ve lived in of soda could be cranked out dissolve the “joint family Grocery stores in Tamil Chennai all along, my father’s of it. These were then removed nature” of the business.

Nadu; supermarkets in native place is Kanchipuram. and corked by hand. With Consequently, from 1 April the south We spent summer vacations shopkeepers encouraging him 1977, the existing branches there and the fridge would to ramp up production, were made independent and always be stocked with Palaniappan moved the unit could use their own financial SUCCESS Bovonto. I had not seen it in out of his house and into his investment, machinery and MANTRA the city until now. Every time I first factory in Virudhunagar other infrastructural facilities.

Local roots, strong look at a bottle of Bovonto, my district in 1916, the same year However, business was carried memories of the summer he had started the unit at out under the banner of Kali distribution network holidays come flooding back,” home. Subsequent units Aerated Water Works, with the he adds with a laugh. opened at a gap of every four name of a particular unit Children who grew up in years, in Madurai, Tirunelveli, mentioned in brackets to Tamil Nadu could not have Tiruchirappalli, Kumbakonam, distinguish one from the other. nine 1.5-litre bottles. The firm escaped seeing an Chennai and Karaikudi.

In order to avoid confusion in also makes 200ml and 300ml advertisement for Kalimark “At that time, a dozen was the future, the family members glass bottles which are priced Bovonto, popular amid a range equal to 14 numbers. Our entered into an agreement on at `10 and `12, respectively, in of cool drinks brought out by marketing strategy was for 12 March 1993 under which the market.

Kali Aerated Water Works. shopkeepers to buy a dozen the right to use the trade name Compared to the other Started by P.V.S.K. but pay only for 12 bottles. and trademarks was redefined brands in the market, the Palaniappan in 1916, the The business was not affected among themselves to remove Kalimark brand, with a net company was named after his even during the freedom doubt and ambiguity. worth of around `100 crore father, Kaliappan, who was a struggle. Our glass bottles Subsequently, two new units according to Sakthivel, does coffee and cardamom were imported from were opened in Salem and lose out on the competitive exporter. Palaniappan, who Germany,” Sakthivel notes.

Karur in 1994 and 2005, edge because its volumes are was 23 at the time, wanted to As the business flourished, respectively. All the units have much lower than that of its step away from his father’s Palaniappan’s sons—K.P. been built to handle capacities rivals and because the business and try something Rajendran, K.P. Dharmarajan of 500-1,000 crates per day. company follows a strict different. “The idea struck and K.P. Ganesan, along with While Palaniappan’s hand“cash-on-carry” policy. “One him when he saw cool their sister G. Damayanthi operated machine gave three of our biggest challenges today drinks manufactured by Ammal and her son G. bottles of soda after a hundred is that shopkeepers demand Spencer’s being sold on Soundarapandian—helped him turns, the semi-automatic discounts, refrigerators and board trains (Spencer’s and oversee it until his death in 1964. machines in the factory churn credit to stock our products.

Co., founded in 1865, was a Four of Rajendran’s children and out 30 bottles of soft drinks We do not offer any of these, store that retailed Dharmarajan’s five sons then within a minute. Each crate either to the stockists or imported goods—it stepped into the business. holds 24 half-litre bottles and retailers. As a result, we are

Kalimark

A

1916

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

not stocked by most supermarket chains. We tell retailers that even if they can’t stock 10 of our cases, we are content if they stock one. We have 60 distributors in Chennai city who reach out to about 10,000 outlets,” Sakthivel notes.

With multinational players dominating the market and the local brand having a fragmented presence in the state, the fourth generation of family members decided last year to come together, reunite the family and revive the business. The partners pooled in funds and have now set up a `15 crore manufacturing unit called Kalis Sparkling Water P. Ltd in Nilakottai, Dindigul, which has the capacity to produce up to 10,000 cases per day. Sakthivel is the managing director and chairman of this unit.

Currently, it manufactures 1.5litre PET bottles for Bovonto and supplies the product to its sister factories across the state.

“We intend to invest about `50 crore more and set up two more units in Salem and Chennai. We have a wide reach over Tamil Nadu. We want to extend this to south India and then to all of India.

With greater manufacturing, we can market our products better as well,” Sakthivel adds.

Terming the reunion the business’ biggest achievement, he points out that his grandparents continue to be an inspiration. “Our grandparents worked hard to build the business. It is up to us to secure it. Though we are not in the same rung as our competitors today, we are still here. Now, we only intend to go higher.”

Write to lounge@livemint.com PHOTOGRAPHS

Fizz factor: (clockwise from top, left) Bottles of the soda; vintage ads from Tamil magazines; K.P.R. Sakthivel, a member of the Kalimark family, manages the Chennai unit; and crates being sent to distributors.

BY

NATHAN G/MINT

L21

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

SG’S STORY IS NOT JUST DEEPLY CONNECTED TO INDIA’S CRICKETING HISTORY, BUT ALSO TO INDEPENDENCE AND PARTITION INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

That ’70s look: West Indies captain Clive Lloyd with Triloknath Anand (right) in 1974; and (far left) vintage SG ads from the 1980s.

1931

Sanspareils Greenlands

A historic innings B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA

some point. Some, like Sunil

rudraneil.s@livemint.com

···························· t’s 1974. The West Indies cricket team is touring India.

They are a team on the brink of creating history. Clive Lloyd has just taken over the captaincy, and the side is bristling with talent.

Vivian Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Alvin Kallicharran and Andy Roberts are in the squad.

A year later, they will win the first ICC Cricket World Cup. A decade later, they will forge their names in cricketing history as the most masterful team ever to play the game. But right now, on this December day in 1974, the team is lounging around in a small, nondescript factory in Meerut called Sanspareils Greenlands, giving measurements for custommade pads and gloves. Triloknath Anand, son of founder Dwarkanath, then a strapping 28-yearold trainee with elaborate mutton chops and a handlebar moustache, is on hand to help.

Thirty-eight years later, Anand is the clean-shaven, bespectacled director of Sanspareils Greenlands, better known as SG, the world’s largest manufacturer of cricket gear.

“We had a small party, some beer, which they loved,” Anand says. “And then we stopped entertaining teams. No use, you see.”

No use, because SG’s products— bats, balls and protective gear— are so much in demand that they’ve been unable to meet market requirements since the 1980s.

“When I joined the company in the early 1970s, we were on a growth trajectory,” Anand says, “and we are still on it.”

SG, now operating out of a swank new office and manufacturing unit in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, is a legendary name in cricket gear. Every Indian cricketer from 1983 onwards has used or endorsed their product at

I

Anand says. “It was a horrible

Gavaskar, remained loyal to the abuse word for us—refugees.”

INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE DAY throughout their careers. InDAYFinally, in 1950, many industrialbrand INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL 1987, Gavaskar became the first SPECIAL ist families uprooted from Sialkot DAY person to reach the 10,000-run mark, using an SG bat, giving the company a picture-perfect ad campaign. In 1992, SG became the official ball suppliers to The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for all domestic matches, and since 1994, all Test matches in India have been played with SG balls.

SG began life in a small manufacturing unit in Sialkot in 1931, when brothers Dwarkanath and Kedarnath Anand decided to diversify the family leather business into manufacturing and exporting sports gear. By the time World War II broke out, SG had 250 people working in its unit, and it continued through the war years. “We were exporting goods worth `14-15 lakh back then,” Anand says.

But what the war could not knock down, Partition did.

It’s 1947, and Dwarkanath’s family is holidaying in the hill resort of Kud in Kashmir when Pakistan and India are officially severed from each other. The family is told not to go back to Sialkot, now in Pakistan, and to move to Amritsar instead.

Dwarkanath, who was not on the trip, stayed put in Sialkot, hoping the situation would resolve quickly. It didn’t. It was only when Dwarkanath’s last remaining neighbour, a judge, moved out, and Dwarkanath was asked to move to a refugee camp, that reality dawned.

“It was bloodshed everywhere,” Anand says, taking wild swings with an imaginary knife. “We lost everything, our house, our factory—we were lucky to be alive.”

The Anands drifted from Amritsar to Delhi, then to Mathura, and then Agra. “We were refugees in our own country,”

managed to negotiate space and SPECIAL financial help from the government to re-establish their factories in Meerut. Dwarkanath began from scratch, with two stitching machines and a dozen employees to make footballs and other leather sporting goods. “No one in my family wanted to speak about the Partition,” Anand says.

“They wanted to forget, they wanted us to forget and move forward,” he says.

The 1950s and 1960s were decades of struggle for SG, which did not have its own brand yet, but was still manufacturing for and exporting to foreign sports companies. “We were producing little, making little money, and conditions were harsh,” Anand says.

“We were paying import duties of up to 330% on raw material. The socialist ideals we began with were good, but perhaps it went on for too long.”

But SG braved it, and in 1972 even launched its own brand of protective cricket gear called Featherlite. There was no money for expansion, yet SG’s products were booked out for seven-eight months. “But we had plans ready, we knew the market would open up,” says Anand. “And then, you see, there’s luck.”

That luck kicked in as the 1980s began. As industrialized nations moved away from artisanal production, developing nations like India stepped in.

Cricket bats and balls demand highly skilled craftsmanship, and SG began manufacturing them, slowly moving away from other sports. In 1982, they launched bats, pads, gloves and balls under their own brand name. In 1983, India won the ICC World Cup, and the country was gripped with cricket fever. “That victory had a

FOUNDERS Dwarkanath and Kedarnath Anand TYPE OF COMPANY Pvt. Ltd KEY PRODUCTS Cricket bats and balls WHERE TO BUY All major sports shops SUCCESS MANTRA Quality control, and understanding the values and nuances of craftsmanship

massive impact,” says Anand.

“Our sales went berserk. Sports shop owners, cricketers, were coming to our factory and saying ‘Jitna maal hai bhej doh (Send us everything you have)’.” The same year, SG opened a second manufacturing unit, and Wasi Ullah Khan, a former state-level cricketer, joined as junior manager.

Khan, along with Anand and his brother Kailash, began working on international-standard balls.

By 1992, they had convinced the BCCI to use SG balls for all Ranji matches, before making the jump to Test cricket.

At SG’s newest manufacturing unit in Meerut, set up in 2008, hundreds of craftsmen focus on minute details. Rows of men stitch seams with furious flair.

Bats are being sculpted out of blocks of wood in a cacophony of humming, sawing and hammering. Showers of pale gold wood shavings fill the air. A board says in bold: “Today’s production

1,417 bats.” Some among these will make their way to Virender Sehwag to hammer sixes. SG now supplies 2,400 Test balls and 3,000 tournament balls a year to the BCCI, and churns out an average of over 1,000 bats a day.

SG also crafts for major international brands. Their recipe for success is simple—precision, skill and quality control. “There are no short cuts,” says Khan, 63, who rose from being chief ball inspector to director of production. “It takes between one to two years to get people to a place where they can make the best stuff. Which is why we have just over a thousand workers here, all salaried with full benefits.”

SG has been running an inhouse training programme since the late 1960s, and every new employee is apprenticed to a master craftsman. “Mechanization’s not possible yet,” Khan says. “There are just too many variables machines can’t handle.

You need people who can feel the wood, or leather. No international player will play with a machinemade bat.”

Salauddin Saifi, 28, is one of the master bat makers here. He comes from a family of carpenters, and was Khan’s apprentice 10 years ago when he joined SG. “I can pick up a wood and tell you how long it will last,” Saifi says. “I go home and I spend time feeling the balance of bats, and studying grains on wood.”

Saifi customizes bats for India’s middle-order batsman Suresh Raina, among others. “He likes lightweight bats with thick edges,” Saifi says. “He will come here and spend a lot of time knocking the surface of the bat and listening for the perfect sound.”

Saifi picks up a finished bat and raps it with his knuckles.

“See that sharp crack of a sound?

That abrupt ‘TAK’ like gunfire?

That’s a good bat.”

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

:

Strokeplay: Sunil Gavaskar (extreme left) with an SG bat; and SG’s new production unit in Meerut.

L22

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

THE MYSORE PAINTS FACTORY, MAKER OF VOTERS’ INK, IS TODAY THE SOLE SUPPLIER TO YOUNG, NEW DEMOCRACIES WORLDWIDE INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIALt

1937

Mysore Paints and Varnish

The ink of democracy

All in the blend: (clockwise from top, left) A sales depot in Mysore that opened in 1979; bottles of indelible ink used for elections have headed to over 25 countries since 1978; bottles of Brindavan colour­ less polish; and a worker mixes a batch of 2K Polyurethane paint used to paint buses.

B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN

from the forests that sur-

1962 when the organization was

INDEPENDENCE rounded Mysore. With an initial chosen to manufacture indeliINDEPENDENCE DAY DAY ble ink created by the National ···························· investment of `1.03 crore, he INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL n June, every voter in Camset up the Mysore Lac Factory.SPECIAL Physical Laboratory (NPL), DAY bodia’s Commune Council “The maharaja decided to make Delhi. The ink cannot be erased SPECIAL

pavitra.j@livemint.com

I

election carried a bit of India on his finger. The indelible ink that marked voters’ index fingers was made in Karnataka at Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd (MPVL). The sole manufacturer of voting ink in the country, this factory, built amid 16 acres of wooded area, with around 100 employees, continues to reinvent itself every few years.

The Mysore factory, like many establishments from preindependence times set up by the then royal family of Mysore, is a combination of new and old. Two structures were built at the time of the inauguration in 1937 and buildings were added as the company grew. Located in a quiet corner of Mysore city, 1km after you get off the Bangalore-Mysore highway, every Mysorean seems to know where it is. Ask for MPVL. “The lac factory?” they correct you.

“Many buildings in Mysore have great historical relevance.

The palace, public buildings, parks and factories, there is so much,” says Vinay Parameswarappa, who conducts Royal Mysore Walks across the city. While many of them are relics, MPVL continues to be relevant today.

MPVL was set up when the maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, decided to make use of the wax

use of the produce to make sealing wax on a large scale,” says M.V. Hemanth Kumar, managing director, MPVL. Sealing wax, which has been used in postal offices across the country and still continues to secure ballot boxes, was the first product of the factory. “In fact, every evening after the factory shuts down, the guard seals the lock with this very wax,” says Kumar.

By 1947 the company that was handed over to the government of Karnataka had started manufacturing paint. It was renamed Mysore Lac and Paints Ltd and was converted into a public sector unit. Wodeyar IV’s rule from 1902-40 had been a prosperous one for Mysore district, which saw the growth of industry, art and agriculture. It was under his rule that the Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Ltd (KSDL), famous for its Mysore Sandal soaps, and Karnataka Silk Industries Corp.

(KSIC), which makes Mysore silk saris, were established along with several other industries. In 1989, the lac and paint company expanded further. It started making varnish and was renamed yet again, this time to Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd, a name it retains today.

But though it was being repeatedly reinvented, its most significant leap took place in

or washed away and takes about 20 days to fade.

MPVL was now an integral part of Indian democracy.

The process of manufacturing the ink is a closely guarded secret and is based on a chemical formula devised by the NPL, with whom the patent of the product also rests. “We still keep the secret safe and still are the sole suppliers of indelible ink to the entire nation,” says Kumar.

The ink was used for the first time in the Lok Sabha election in 1962 and has since been used in every Parliamentary election and almost every assembly and local election.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha election, the Election Commission of India ordered 1.67 million 5ml bottles of ink. “At the time, they just placed a dot on the index finger of every voter,” says C. Harakumar, general manager at MPVL. In the 2009 election, the requirement went up to 1.9 million bottles, with each bottle containing double the quantity, 10ml.

Each bottle can mark 700 fingers. As the largest state, Uttar Pradesh receives the maximum quantity while the smallest amount goes to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 1978, the company was asked to export its poster

FOUNDER The maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV TYPE OF COMPANY Public sector unit KEY PRODUCTS Indelible ink for voting, enamel paints, varnishes and anti­ corrosive coatings WHERE TO BUY Countrywide retail paint stores SUCCESS MANTRA Constant innovation

product to Singapore. MPVL now exports indelible ink to more than 25 countries.

On a walk through the laboratory on the Mysore campus, the managing team of the company is keen to show off their new inventions.

“We have been a profit-making public sector for nearly 22 years,” says Kumar, adding that the company has been growing steadily for more than two decades now. MPVL had an annual turnover of `16 crore in the last financial year and a profit of `191 lakh.

Also in the business of making decorative paints, industrial coatings and varnishes, they are constantly wary of the competition. Their newest venture, which took shape after five years of research, is glossy paint meant for luxury buses. Named 2K Polyurethane paint, it will be supplied to the Karnataka State Road Transport Corp. (KSRTC) to begin with.

But the invention they wear with the greatest pride is the lead-free paint that was used to decorate clay idols for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival for the first time in 2010. “The Mysore district authorities approached us to check if this could be made,” smiles Kumar.

After a year’s research they had the product in hand. “Lead-free paint is not as glossy as other paints but this year we had a meeting with small entrepreneurs who make these idols and have encouraged them to use our paints,” says Kumar.

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT