When Harshit Agrawal was all of 10 years previous, his favorite pastime was sitting at his grandfather’s mithai store off Mumbai’s Elphinstone Highway. Chubby legs swinging within the air — as they couldn’t but attain the bottom — pretending to rely money and secretly stealing a mithai or two from the glass instances make Harshit’s fondest recollections.

When his father took over the store following his grandfather’s sickness, Harshit recounts how ‘Janta Dairy’ assumed the function of the third little one of the household, rising alongside the boys. “He [my father] cherished it dearly,” he smiles.

It was this ardent love for the mithai enterprise that compelled Harshit and his youthful brother Tanay to do every part of their energy to maintain the legacy alive when it was threatened amidst the pandemic. The brother duo aren’t halwais — Harshit is a movie producer and Tanay a literature graduate — however that didn’t cease them from testing new floor with their cloud kitchen Pistabarfi that they launched on the peak of the pandemic.

Was the foray into the mithai scene difficult? “Not in the event you grew up in my household the place it’s in our DNA,” laughs Harshit.

The journey from being harmless youngsters enjoying round in Janta Dairy to teaming as much as save the household enterprise is a memorable one for the brothers. They share their story with The Higher India.

A candy journey

What’s your favorite mithai? For Harshit it’s kalakand.

He recounts Tanay’s and his childhood being bundled in a repertoire of flavours of various sweets and savouries. The locals of Mumbai, significantly Elphinstone Highway, distinguished Janta Dairy by two issues — an aroma of sweets wafting out and a smiling man who was a continuing fixture on the counter.

Since 1968, Harshit’s father has had a front-row seat to the evolution of Elphinstone Highway and Mumbai alike. And the store has seen a trajectory of its personal — from a dairy that offered the world’s very best quality milk, curd, paneer, and lassi to a store that added mithais and samosas to its listing of things.

The boys cherished spending all their free time right here.

Although Harshit by no means educated as a halwai, he recounts anecdotes that have been silently shaping this ability in him. Hours spent sampling the mithais — mawa pedhas, balusaahi (a crispy candy made with flour and butter), kaju katli, motichoor laddoo, kalakand (a candy cheese confection), Bombay halwa, Mahim halwa, dry mysore pak (which in comparison with its moist counterpart has a biscuit texture), dink laddoo (made utilizing resin, nuts and ghee) and methi laddoo — turned Harshit right into a connoisseur of sweets at an early age.

He remembers how he’d typically level out to his father when a batch of sweets didn’t “style fairly proper”. He provides, “My father would instantly discard the batch. I’ve by no means seen him attempt to salvage a batch of mithai by mixing the previous batch with the brand new — a typical act amongst most mithai makers. As an alternative, he’d bear the losses however guarantee his prospects have been getting the perfect.”

And thus grew the celebrity of Janta Dairy.

The brothers hardly bear in mind seeing their father at house. Harshit goes on, “You see, my father has gone to the store each single day, ever since he took over in Class 12. He has by no means missed work. It’s house, store, and again house for dinner. Even on Sundays, the routine continues.”

Till at some point, the routine stopped. The COVID pandemic had prolonged its attain to Mumbai.

Reimagining old-school classics

It was disheartening for the boys to observe their father, who cherished the dairy, now sit at house. Enterprise was at an all-time low. And someplace, Harshit felt their household legacy was going to falter until they stepped in.

Pistabarfi was born out of a quest to avoid wasting a heirloom enterprise. Although testing new waters, the brothers say there was completely no friction. Tanay introduced his experience in coping with the logistics, whereas Harshit was in control of the inventive side of the enterprise.

The thought was for the household to proceed promoting mithai by means of a cloud kitchen strategy till Janta Dairy was able to reopen. The primary two years weren’t a lot about gross sales however constructing a model voice, says Tanay.

Two issues would set Pistabarfi aside, the brothers determined. The packaging and the standard of components.

Elaborating on the primary, Harshit says, “The mithai scene in India is a really unorganised market. I’m speaking in regards to the early 2000s when there wasn’t numerous emphasis on packaging. Value-cutting was rampant. Immediately, the scene has barely improved. Should you see the same old mithai packing containers they often characteristic designs like a cow, milk, and many others. The imagery just isn’t thrilling.”

He provides, “Even manufacturers that target good packaging don’t inform a narrative by means of it. There’s no voice.”

The second ache level was that of high quality.

“It’s robust for the mithais in Mumbai to rival that in different cities. It’s because, for high quality mithai, high quality uncooked supplies are wanted. These are costly. If employed, this may in flip improve the price of the mithai. So, most mithai makers resort to components that may assist them obtain a steadiness between cost-effectiveness and style,” he shares.

Pistabarfi is constructed on addressing these factors. The brothers emphasise that the thought behind the enterprise has all the time been to stay to their conventional roots and play to their strengths.

Taking the legacy ahead

Whereas designing the model id, Harshit was clear that high quality wanted to be premium, which can also be why Pistabarfi merchandise retail at a better charge than most mithais.

The model retails three merchandise — pistabarfi created from crushed Peshawari pistachios, kaju katli (made with premium cashew nuts and 400 g of sugar in distinction to the 600 g variants out there) and gur laddoo made with jowar, bajra, nachni, wheat, rice, jaggery and ghee.

The rationale behind this restricted choice, says Tanay, is high quality. “We’re very certain of the three mithais we’ve. It takes numerous time to do R&D and to crack the proper style. Additionally, a few of these recipes have been carried down from technology to technology and that makes it particular. We need to embody Mysore pak subsequent, trials for which have been underway for fairly a while now.”

And their packaging parallels the mithais with regards to attract. 

Elaborating on how he got here throughout this concept of utilizing Gond artwork on the mithai packing containers, Harshit says, “I stumbled upon this type of artwork whereas aiding director Devashish Makhija on his quick movie again in 2015. He gifted me the e-book ‘The Night time Lifetime of Timber’ which featured Gond artwork in it. I used to be so taken up by this picture and its conventional linkages that when developing with the packaging for Pistabarfi, I received the picture licensed from Tara Books, and so they have been more than pleased to oblige.”

So, is Pistabarfi the brand new Janta Dairy?

“Completely not,” says Harshit. He’s agency that the previous was created as an ode to the latter’s legacy with a barely totally different strategy. “The tip shopper could be very totally different for each locations. Janta Dairy targets the locals who’ve been coming to the store since my grandfather’s time. It’s a really repeat clientele. Then again, Pistabarfi has a distinct segment viewers.”

Immediately, Pistabarfi delivers throughout India and is nicely on its solution to developing with value-added snacking merchandise that break the parable of mithais solely being a festive motive. For example, take the kaju katli mithai bar, a chocolate bar-shaped product that’s truly kaju katli!

“One can preserve it of their pocket and snack on it after they wish to. It isn’t essentially what I’d name ‘fusion’. It’s extra like we’re making merchandise which can be accessible,” he shares.

However even whereas the brothers have damaged into the mithai phase with their distinctive cloud kitchen strategy, Harshit minces no phrases when he says it’s silly to imagine one might deliver a whole shift.

“We’re so accustomed to only strolling down the highway and getting into a mithai store, asking to style the assorted sweets as we take our choose. It’s an emotion. That’s what Janta Dairy will all the time give its prospects. I’m not going to vary that,” he says.

Talking about watching his sons step in, Narottam (56) says, “I’ve been on the store since I used to be in Class 12. That’s the one actuality I do know and lived for all these years. My thought was to drag by means of for so long as I might as a result of it’s part of my id and dropping the store would imply dropping part of myself. My sons prevented that from taking place.”

“What they’ve completed is kind of totally different from what I might have ever imagined. It’s distinctive and I really feel proud as a father,” he remarks.

Edited by Pranita Bhat