DNA Mumbai Anniversary: Haldiram - Crackling success

Haldiram’s Bhujiawala is one true-blue desi success story – a local snack that has found a following all across the country and many parts of the world; a brand that’s worth thousands of crores; a desi company that has forced even an MNC powerhouse like Pepsi to change the way it does business in India, and launch a similar product.  

But who is Haldiram and how did the Haldiram’s empire happen?

The story begins in 1937 in Bikaner, with Gangabhisan Agarwal, nicknamed Haldiram, who ran a flourishing bhujia business. He wasn’t the first in his family to do so – the credit for that goes to his grandfather Tansukhdas – but Gangabhisan had his own recipe for bhujias that made him hugely popular with customers in Bikaner and beyond. Encouraged by his success, Rameshwarlal, Gangabhisan’s youngest son, decided to open a Haldiram’s Bhujiawala branch in Calcutta (or Kolkata, as it is now), which had a large population of expat “Marwaris”. In later decades, Shiv Kishan Agarwal, the son of Gangabhisan’s eldest son Moolchand, went to Nagpur, while his two brothers, Madhusudan and Manoharlal, came to Delhi.

Haldiram’s Bhujiawala prospered and business grew with the geographical expansion, but soon schisms emerged as the family got larger, and each generation brought in new and ever more ambitious claimants to Haldiram’s legacy. Sometime in the 1960s, Gangabhisan worked out a territorial division of the business by which Rameshwarlal and his sons would do business in Kolkata and West Bengal, while Moolchand’s sons would manage Delhi and Nagpur. It worked well for sometime, but troubles began in the 1990s when the Kolkata branch of the family decided to open a shop in Delhi. It led to a legal wrangles over the use of the trademark ‘Haldiram Bhujiawala’. The Delhi branch of the family alleged their Calcutta cousins were using it illegally. The case dragged on for a decade, going from lower to high courts and finally the Supreme Court. Finally, in 2010, the court ruled that only the Delhi branch of the family had the right to use the ‘Haldiram’s Bhujiawala’ trademark.

The family feud does not seem to have affected Haldiram’s success as each branch of the family worked to grow the business across India and overseas. Haldiram’s Marketing, the company which manages the north India business, is now worth around Rs 3000 crore, and Haldiram Foods, which looks at the west and south, is Rs 1,500 crore. 

Sub-brands have a slightly different, yet identifiable name, so customers would recognise the connection with the old, much-trusted brand. So in Kolkata,  “Haldiram’s Prabhuji”; it’s Haldiram’s Mo’Pleez; Bikaji, a business started by Shiv Ratan Agarwal in Bikaner, another grandson of Gangabhisan’s by his son Moolchand.    

Once synonymous with the bhujia, Hadiram’s has over the years expanded its range to become something of a one-stop-shop for Indian vegetarian ready-to-eat fare today, selling everything from savouries, sweets, drinks, snacks, and even quick meals in its chain of restaurants which dot our cities and highways – the desi counterpart to McDonald’s.

Its factory in Delhi was state-of-the-art when it came up in the 1990s; it had machinery imported from the US to make potato-based snacks. Market gurus have also lauded how it’s introduced small-sized packs for people who might want to grab a quick bite on the go. The recently launched Haldiram’s diet range, a bid to keep up with new age health fads, is another instance of how it’s open to change. Perhaps, it is this adaptability to changing social and dietary habits, as much as the larger economic and political scenario that accounts for Haldiram’s continued success.