The heady aroma of clove and black pepper, of cardamom and ginger, wafts straight off the pages of this business biography. That’s not surprising at all, given that it traces the fortunes of the Agarwal family from Rajasthan’s Marwar region, which took a fistful of bhujia — the roadside snack that’s sold by the bhori in Bikaner’s bazaars — infused it with three generations of toil, and has today built a processed foods business empire under the Haldiram’s brand that is valued, by some estimates, at about $1 billion (Rs. 6,500 crore).
But this savoury narrative, which is an inspirational chronicle of a homegrown ‘family business’ that’s been pickled in conservatism, is laced with an extra-strong masala flavour. It relates to a breakaway strand of the family, based in Kolkata, about whom the rest of the khandan , which built its bhujia base in Bikaner, Nagpur and Delhi, can only speak in hushed tones...
Travelling to the heart of Marwar, where the Agarwals’ story begins, author Pavitra Kumar, a Minnesota-based marketing professional, diligently recreates the family tree. Her efforts are rendered somewhat challenging by the absence of public records relating to the origins of the trade, which leaves her to rely largely on word-of-mouth narratives of the current two generations of bhujiawalas.
As a consequence, there is no certainty about the precise dates for even pivotal events in the family history. Even the details of who exactly started the bhujia business are lost in the blur of familial memory.
This much, however, is clear: even if the origins lay in an earlier time, it was during the time of Ganga Bhishen Agarwal (who was endearingly nicknamed ‘Haldiram’ by his mother, and who would later provide the group’s brand identity) that the ‘product differentiation’ (to retrofit a modern-day management jargon to what was in its time a shot in the dark) happened.
Building on a bhujia sev recipe proffered by an aunt, a young Haldiram, married by age 10 and already immersed in the trade, experimented with spices and flavours and arrived at a formulation that set “Haldiram’s bhujia” apart in the crowded marketplace of Bikaner’s snack-vendors.
In an age when the concept of ‘branding’ was virtually unknown, the teenager from a struggling Marwari family with no education but with oodles of entrepreneurial instincts was, unknown even to himself, laying the foundations for the Haldiram’s superbrand. The course of the family’s history didn’t always run smooth, and over the next generation, the Agarwals are wracked by Mahabharat-esque tussles that pit brother against brother. But at critical moments in Haldiram’s history, when the safety-first conservatism of the old guard is pitted against the risk-embracing brashness of a younger generation, the clashes revolve not so much around inter-personal issues as much as on business philosophical differences. To their sterling credit, and braving the odds heavily weighted against them in a patriarchal familial set-up, the Young Turks often win, often using deception as an effective weapon of war.
The expansion of the Haldiram’s empire from small-town Bikaner to, first, Kolkata and, later, to Nagpur and Delhi, battling formidable headwinds, is a breathless case study of old-school family business, which is giving way to a gradual professionalisation, with the induction of ‘outsiders’ into key managerial functions. Over this period, it has enlarged its product profile from the ever-popular bhujia sev to an expanded universe of processed and frozen foods, and a restaurant chain.
Now nearing the centenary of its founding, the Haldiram’s empire is poised for the next phase of expansion, under a young generation of Agarwals who, for the first time, come equipped with international business accreditation. From some accounts, the group is poised to take in private equity, although that would come with a dilution of management control that may not sit well with a robustly cash-rich family business.
Kumar does a competent job of chronicling these twists and turns, and her boots-on-the-ground reportage is illuminating. And yet, her account of the growth of the family business is non-critical to the point of bordering on hagiography. Additionally, her prose tends on occasion to be stilted, which has a jarring effect, much like the crunch of a stray stone in a mouthful of bhujia sev. Her diligent work could have vastly benefited from the exertions of a less-forgiving editor.
But overall, Bhujia Barons offers an insightful peep into the workings of one of India’s homegrown superbrands, which was built on the foundations of old-fashioned conservatism but has evolved into a somewhat more professionally-run business that has spread its wings worldwide.
Bhujia Barons: The Untold Story of How Haldiram Built a Rs. 5,000-crore Empire; Pavitra Kumar, Published in Portfolio by Penguin Random House India, Rs. 399.
Venky Vembu is an editor with Business Line , and a whimsical writer and blogger.
