It started as a hole-in-the-wall outlet selling namkeen and mithai in Bikaner, Rajasthan, way back in 1937. Today, Haldiram’s is the undisputed bhujia king that marquee global investors are rushing to grab a bite of. It is tough to put a single face behind its grand success story, though. “Every member of the family is involved in every decision made for the brand,” says an executive in the thick of things.
The snacks and foods empire, valued at over $10 billion (Rs 85,000 crore) after its latest fundraise, is currently helmed by the elusive Agarwal brothers – Shiv Kishan and Manohar Lal Agarwal, the grandsons of Haldiram’s founder Ganga Bhishen Agarwal who was fondly called Haldiram by her mother. A young Shiv Kishan got to know the recipe from his aunt who used to make a thick and soft prototype of the current snack known as Bikaneri bhujia.
Today they are available in stores of every size and shape across the country and many across the world, and their soan papdis are the country’s Diwali gifting staple. But pinning them down for an interview is as difficult as Ghibli-fying your selfie is easy.
What’s also intriguing is the fact that the iconic brand has rarely loosened its purse strings for big-budget advertising campaigns, celebrity endorsements or publicity stunts –a common practice with family-led brands. But that doesn’t take away from their immense contribution to standardising the Indian namkeen and mithais, a highly unregulated space that has been a challenge even for several international brands.
After cutting his teeth on his grandfather’s bhujia shop in Kolkata, a young Shiv Kishan joined the family business in 1968 to help a brother-in-law set up a shop to sell namkeens, sweets and other Indian food items in Nagpur, then a sleepy town.
Five years later, brother Manohar Lal started Haldiram’s first Delhi outlet, Bikaner Bhujia, in Chandni Chowk. A few family tiffs and many unrelated forays later, the Delhi and Nagpur arms came together in 2023 to create Haldiram Snacks Food, headquartered in Delhi, which recently offloaded around 10% stake to three investors — Temasek, IHC and Alpha Wave.
Their biggest contribution to the category has been to move it up the value chain without short-circuiting mass appeal, say experts. “You can still buy a bhujia packet for under Rs 10, or walk into a plush cafe and have a thali. That flexibility makes the business resilient. The brand’s biggest strength lies in premiumisation without alienation,”says Ambika Sharma, founder and chief strategist at Pulp Strategy.
A key aspect of their premiumisation strategy has been to make the products’ packaging immaculate and modern. The brothers had started investing in processes, manufacturing, packaging, and product development long before it became fashionable to do so.
In 2001, Shiv Kishan and Manohar Lal were recognised as EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year for their role in modernising the Indian snacks industry and setting contemporary packaging standards. “The Agarwal brothers are the brains behind contemporary packaging standards which have become norms in the Indian sweets and snacks industry,”said the awards citation.
Indeed, Haldiram’s was the first Indian company to emphasise packaging and presentation. The brothers’ sharp understanding of modern business practices led to innovations such as zip pouches, standee pouch packaging, and four-layer structure flexible packaging, which enabled the friendly neighbourhood shops and supermarkets stock large-sized namkeen packs for the first time.
Under their watch, Haldiram’s also introduced a 100% process automation in the manufacturing of traditional snacks and was the first company to open a quick-service restaurant offering traditional street food. The result? That small snack & sweet shop in Bikaner is now a global enterprise that not only offers a wide variety of finger snacks and mithais but also boasts of a chain of restaurants across India, besides another 100-plus countries, including the US, the UK and Japan, often run with the help of franchisees.
Cultural familiarity is the brothers’ biggest moat. The family didn’t try to make Haldiram’s something it is not. They took what is proven to work—nostalgia, taste memory, local formats—and scaled it smartly. A company release posted on the Haldiram’s website says that in the financial year 2013-2014, its revenue stood at Rs 3,500 crore, which was more than the combined revenues of fast food giants Domino’s and McDonald’s in India that year. “It just goes to show that the popularity of foreign culture cannot beat a good Indian product,” the release adds.
In one of his rare interviews to a business newspaper in 2020, Shiv Kishan shared credit for every new product and every big step towards expanding the business to his large family and its single-minded focus on making “such delicious food that even meat eaters would turn vegetarian”.
In their pursuit of offering something irresistible, the Agarwal family ended up creating India’s – perhaps the world’s – most-loved bhujia brand.