How did Haldiram become a billion-dollar business by just selling bhujia?

Today Haldiram’s is valued at 3 billion Dollars (21000 crores) which is an astonishing figure so let's take a look at how did Haldiram stood up a billion-dollar empire by just selling bhujia?

The success story was started by Ganga Bhisen Agarwal fondly known as Haldiram by his mother in 1937. Haldiram used to work initially in his family business of selling ‘Bhujia’ which was his Aunt’s recipe at the time. The family business boomed after his grandfather sold his aunt’s recipe at the market but Haldiram was not satisfied with that success and worked on various new iteration for revolutionizing bhujia.

That’s when he reinvented bhujia by making it with moth flour instead of Besan and making it crispy and naming it ‘Dungar sev’ selling it at 150% above the market price of the existing local bhujia. This newly changed bhujia was a hit in the market thus forming the foundation of brand value. This was the founding pillar of Haldiram’s empire. In the early 1950s, Ganga Bhishen, along with his sons Moolchand and Rameshwar Lal, took a leap of faith with the help of well-wishers and opened a business in Kolkata after Haldiram got an idea of expanding to Kolkata after attending a marriage there. In the next three decades, the business migrated to Nagpur handled by Shiv Kishen Agarwal and then Delhi by Manohar Lal Agarwal and Madhusudan Agarwal.

Now fast forward to the late 1960s the Haldiram’s empire was separated into businesses situated in Bikaner, Nagpur, Kolkata, and Delhi. The reign of the Haldiram’s situated in Nagpur was handed over to Shiv Kishan Agarwal one of the Grandsons of Haldiram. He was struggling to sell his bhujia in Nagpur as the demand for snacks was not very high. So he did market research and found three market opportunities.

The first one was that the market of Maharashtra did not have a lot of savory snacks so he could grasp this opportunity and bring in new snacks while at the same time increasing the trust among the people. The second thing he noticed was that the sweet market was not too diverse and included very few common sweets such as Ladoos and Mysore Pak so he could use this to his advantage of bringing in new sweets. The third thing he noticed was that South Indian foods such as Dosa and Idly were famous here and he could use this to his advantage too to set up a base.

Seeing the gap in the sweet market Shiv Kishan bought in a new sweet dish made of thickening of milk, sugar, Cashew nut, etc thus forming the iconic ‘Kaju Katli’. This was a masterstroke as it became a huge success in the market. Seeing this he brought in many other snacks such as Rasgullah, Rasmalai, Malai Ladoo, etc thus leading the sales to increase by 400% within a short span of three years. He then turned over to the craze of south Indian food and set up a restaurant selling them with slowly gathering a fan base and trust and then bringing in samosas and kachoris.

So the tactic that was used by Shiv Kishen was not jumping directly into the market with new products but by slowly penetrating the market by selling existing products and slowly increasing the trust among the crowd and then introducing the new products which sold smoothly due to the existing trust already set up by Shiv Kishen.

Now let take a look at how Manohar Lal Agarwal drove this empire more forward. He focused on something which was neglected by many of the competitors at that time which gave him a huge advantage and that is ‘Packaging and location’. During the 1980s many of the competitors of Haldiram’s didn’t focus on packaging.

Manohar Lal saw this as an advantage to create brand image thus printing brand name attractively on all packaging which led to gaining a huge advantage in popularity of the brand.

The products of Haldiram’s with its branding on the products caught the eyes of the people especially in crowded places such as Bus stops, Railway stations, etc thus bringing them in as customers. This strategy worked out so well that within the short span of 5 years by 1981 the production skyrocketed 400% to 3000 kgs per month. The company has grown at a tremendous pace over the years and in 2017 it was crowned as the country's largest snack company, surpassing all other domestic and international competitors. Today Haldiram's products are available in more than 80 countries.

A small bhujia shop from 1937 with proper business strategies and plans has risen to be the country's largest snack company worth billions of dollars. This shows that proper determination and strategies with patience and dedication would make you soar high enough no matter where you start.

--- Meeran