Indian mithai industry – changing the formula
As a new generation demands a new taste, India’s multi-million dollar mithai and namkeen industry seeks new markets abroad and tweaks its ancient recipes By ADITI NAGAPPA
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n 1999, when the scion of the famous Gupta Brothers of Kolkata, Inder Kumar Gupta and Bahrain foodie P.K. Ravi brought a taste of Gupta’s legendary mithai expertise to the Kingdom through ‘Rangoli Mithai’, the self-appointed gourmets in Bahrain were thrown off-track. In the first weeks, there were many complaints and advise given on how the sweets were just --- not sweet enough. To all the suggestions, Gupta, a veteran with decades of expertise, patiently replied, “In my mithai, if it is kaju katli, you have to taste the cashew; if it is a pista roll, you have to taste the nuttiness. In my ras malai, the sweetness goes from the cottage cheese roll into the milk and not the other way round.” 28
Soon mithai-lovers in Bahrain and even neighbouring Saudi Arabia were beating a path to his shop and the delicate taste of Rangoli’s mithai had won palates. That’s good news and unusual too, because, for all its festive reputation, Indian sweets have a bad rap with the younger generation and with Bahrainis too. They find it overpoweringly sweet even though there is an emotional connection. My favourite story happens to be about HRH the Prime Minister, Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa – when the Bhatia community once went to his majlis, they took a framed photo of the Prime Minister and his older brother the late Amir Shaikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa visiting a Bhatia merchant’s home for Diwali as children
SALAAM BAHRAIN | August | 2020
accompanying their father, the then Ruler. “I remember Diwali,” the Prime Minister said, “We used to get laddoos with a silver coin embedded in it and we looked forward to it.”
Branded growth
The mithai and namkeen industry in India is a massive traditional industry and there are about 500 types of mithai, namkeen and savories commercially trending in the country. It is the biggest buyer of raw materials such as flour, besan, sugar, ghee, oils and spices. The industry employs more than one crore people directly and many more indirectly. In January 2020, the Federation of Sweets & Namkeen
