Haldiram's: From a Small Sweet Shop to a Snack EmpireSnack Empire 19 October 2026 · 5 min read · 303 reads
Business · Marketing · Leadership
Haldiram's: From a Small Sweet Shop to a Snack Empire Snack Empire
An Indian snack brand that started behind a shop counter, split into several companies, and now sells worldwide. What a shared name teaches.
If you have ever walked into an Indian grocery store anywhere in the world, there is a good chance you have seen a bright packet of crunchy yellow snack with the name Haldiram's on it. It is one of the
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biggest
names
in
Indian
snacks.
And
it
began,
by
most
accounts,
behind
a
counter
in
a
small
shop.
I have been reading about the company, and what hooked me is not only the growth. It is a family story, with a very modern question inside it: what happens to a famous name when several branches of a family all want to use it?
A shop in Bikaner
Haldiram's was founded in 1937 as a sweets and snacks shop in Bikaner, a city in the desert state of Rajasthan in north-west India. The Wikipedia article names the founder as Ganga Bhishen Agarwal, also known as Haldiram Ji. Other sources spell the first name slightly differently, Ganga Bishan, which is common with Indian names written in English.
A quick word on the food, for readers outside India. "Namkeen" is the Hindi word for salty, savoury snacks, the kind you eat with tea. Bikaneri bhujia, a thin, crunchy snack named after Bikaner, the city where the company began, is one of the best-known examples. The company also sells sweets, which in India are a big part of festivals and gifting.
The point for business owners: this started as one shop selling food people already loved to eat. The product was not new. My guess is that care and consistency are what made people ask for it by name, though the sources I read do not say so directly.
One family, several companies
Here is where it gets interesting. An article in Outlook Business from March 2025 says the founder's descendants spread out from Bikaner to Delhi, Nagpur and Kolkata, and by the end of the 20th century there were four units. Nagpur is a city in central India, and one of the main Haldiram's businesses is based there, according to the Wikipedia article.
The same Outlook article describes what followed. A grandson, Shiv Ratan Agarwal, split off and started a separate company called Bikaji, which is now listed on the stock exchange. The article also describes court action over use of the Haldiram name. In 2010, it says, the Kolkata unit was barred from using it and now operates as Haldiram Bhujiawala. Later, the Delhi and Nagpur snack businesses were reported to have joined together. The Wikipedia article says the combined snack company, Haldiram Snacks Food, is split 56 percent to the Delhi-based family and 44 percent to the Nagpur-based family.
I would not claim to know the details of a private family's dealings. These are reports from the press, and the arrangement has changed over time. But the shape is clear: a single name ended up being used by different businesses, and there was court action over who could use it.
From counter to global shelf
Reach Outside investorsTemasek deal reported 2025
Many countriesOver 100, per Outlook
Packaged snacksSold in shops, not only at counters
Family branchesDelhi, Nagpur, Kolkata
One shopBikaner, 1937
Based on the Wikipedia and Outlook Business articles.From counter to packet
The Wikipedia article says the company is also a packaged-food business, since its restaurants have retail sections selling packets of snacks and sweets. That matters. A sweet shop sells to the people who walk past. A packet on a shelf can be sold to anyone, anywhere, including people who have never visited Bikaner.
The Outlook article says the brand now sells in over 100 countries, with more than 400 types of namkeen, sweets and other packaged foods. It also reports a deal in March 2025. In it, Singapore's sovereign investment fund Temasek reportedly agreed to buy about 10 percent of the business for about 1 billion US dollars. The article mentions a valuation of around 10 billion dollars. Please treat that as a press report of the deal, not a number I could check in a filing.
On size, the two sources I read disagree a little. Wikipedia lists revenue of about 12,800 crore rupees for the 2024 financial year, around 1.3 billion US dollars. (A crore is ten million.) Outlook, citing reports, says around 14,000 crore. I would not quote either as exact. The safe version is that it is a business with sales above a billion dollars.
A market that keeps growing
Part of Haldiram's story is simply a good market. The Outlook Business article quotes a research firm, IMARC. It values India's snack market at about 46,571 crore rupees in 2024 and expects it to reach about 101,811 crore by 2033, a growth rate of around 8.6 percent a year. That research firm links growth to people moving to cities, rising incomes and changing lifestyles. A projection is a forecast, not a fact, so I would treat it as a direction.
The same article says Haldiram's holds more than 40 percent of the snacks and savoury market in India, though I could not check that figure against a filing. It also lists newer sub-brands, including Minute Khana and Cup Shup, and says the company has acquired smaller brands such as Babaji Namkeen, Akash Namkeen and Atop Foods.
Notice the pattern. The company did not only grow by making the same thing in more places. It also added new product lines and bought other brands. That is a different kind of growth from the first shop, and I would guess it needs a different kind of management.
What the story teaches
A name is an asset that can be shared by accident. In this story the family branches ended up using the name, and there was court action. If you plan to leave a business to more than one person, decide early who owns the name, in which cities, and in writing.
Consistency travels better than novelty. People trust a snack that tastes the same in Nagpur as in a shop abroad. That is hard to do, and it is not glamorous.
A product that fits a packet can travel. Fresh sweets are hard to ship. Dry snacks are easier. If you want to reach beyond your city, ask what part of what you sell can be packaged, repeated and sent.
What I take from this
I read this as a story about two kinds of growth. One is growth in reach, which Haldiram's clearly did well. The other is growth in structure: who owns what, and what the rules are. The first can look easy while the second quietly goes wrong.
One thing to try this week: write down the one name, mark or recipe in your business that people would pay for. Then write who legally owns it, who is allowed to use it, and what happens if a partner or family member leaves. If you cannot answer in three lines, that is your task for the month. For legal questions, talk to a qualified lawyer.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Haldiram's": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldiram%27s
- Outlook Business, "Haldiram's $10 Billion Valuation: What It Reveals About India's Snack Market", 17 March 2025: https://www.outlookbusiness.com/corporate/haldirams-10-billion-valuation-what-it-reveals-about-indias-snack-market
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