One of India’s biggest sweet, snacks and restaurants, Haldiram’s is easily one of the most recognizable food brands in the Northern part of India. The company has its humble origins dating pre-Independence in 1937 by the father of Ganga Bhishen Agarwal who used to sell Bhujia in Bikaner, Rajasthan. Agarwal later left his family due to a dispute and started selling namkeen on the street which was prepared by his wife at home.

In 1946, the first Haldiram store was opened which sold Bikaneri Bhujia. The name “Haldiram” has his origin in Agarwal’s nickname given by his mother. The Bhujia sold by Haldiram’s was reinvented by the addition of moth flour which made it thinner, this change proved to be successful and increased the income manifolds.

By the early 1930s, the price of bhujia went up from 2 paise a kilo to 25 paise, making it a successful business venture for the whole family to live off. Merchants on their way to Kolkata stopped by to purchase this bhujia for friends and family back home and the seeds of a global empire began to be sowed. When Ganga Bhishen went to Kolkata to attend a wedding ceremony, who knew that at this time his life as well as the appeal of the bhujia was to be changed forever. He had an idea to open a shop in Kolkata. This was their first branch out of Bikaner and laid the foundations of expansion of this successful bhujia business in 1970.

While the second generation did not expand the business further, it was his grandsons Manhoharlal and Shiv Kishan who took the business to Nagpur and the capital Delhi. Business in Delhi began in 1983 in Chandni Chowk but, unlike the other cities they had ventured into, bhujia was not a unique product in Delhi. The brothers faced immense competition from established players such as Ghantewala and Bikanerwala. As a strategy, they differentiated themselves by focusing on adjusting flavours and innovation to meet the needs of the market and soon began to break even. Once business picked up, they turned their apartment into a factory, where the entire family pulled long sleepless nights, trying to keep up with demand. Soon, the single Chandni Chowk location was not enough and Manohar Lal began looking for factory space to begin large-scale production. The first factory was set up in the late ’80s. After that, distribution became one of their greatest strengths, one of the secrets to their success in the capital. This was followed by restaurants in major cities in India and countries abroad including the United States, Canada and Thailand.

Currently Haldiram is producing more than 400 products. It offers all different categories of Veg frozen food, various types of Namkeen snacks and a variety of sweets. A testament of their success is that today at railway stations and stalls around the country, the ₹5 Haldiram’s bhujia packet is used as currency, as a substitute for loose change.

Ganga Bhishen Agarwal left for the heavenly abode on 23^rd February 1980 but he wouldn’t have imagined that one day his products will sell globally and it would be a business with a net worth of ₹7,130 crore.