Know how giant is the Namkeen Market of Indore: 500 factories, 4000 retail outlet, Tonnes of production.
The very air is redolent with spices — the piquancy of chilies, the earthiness of coriander, the feisty notes of mint. This is where Indore’s oldest snackwallah, the 81-year-old Aakash Namkeen, fries and roasts about 40 tonnes of savory snacks every day and fills them into 100,000 packets of varying sizes. Its plant at Kumedi village, about 12 km from the heart of Indore, has a production capacity of 1,250 tonnes a month.
Akaash Namkeen
Rajnish Gupta, director, Aakash Namkeen, says their 65 products — a medley of sev, mixtures, chiwdaand chips — capture the taste of Indore. Even so, this is just a whiff of the namkeen city. Rajnish says around 2.5 lakh tonnes of namkeen is produced every day in the unorganized snack market of Indore.
The city has a centuries-old tradition of food. More than its historical landmarks, it is known for the Ratlami sev, garadu chat and poha that incongruously comes with jalebi. The city’s Sarafa Bazaar, a market lined with jewelry shops, transforms into a vast shack of snacks after sunset and remains vibrant until the early hours of the morning.
Prakash Namkeen
Prataap Snacks
Om Namkeen
Players like Om are happy being a big fish in a small pond. They munch on anecdotes. Its most popular namkeen is Income Tax Mixture after a 17-year-old incident in which a few income-tax professionals asked for a blend of five-six mixtures during a visit to the shop. Anurga Bothra’s father Dhanpat sold leftovers of this mixed mixture to customers and it became an instant hit. Anurag has recently launched a mixture of 50 varieties and called it the GST Mixture owing to its “complicated” taste. He now has eight standalone retail outlets of Om Namkeen — five in Indore and three in Kolkata — where he offers 350 varieties of farsan (salty snacks). He is willing to invest in product innovation and multiply the already large offerings but wants to focus on serving the customers of Indore better as opposed to expanding into other cities.
