Some brands enter your life through advertising. Haldiram's entered through the kitchen cupboard. It is the crinkly packet of aloo bhujia that appeared beside the evening chai, the box of soan papdi that did the rounds of relatives every Diwali, the plate of raj kachori that ended a long family outing. For generations of Indians, the name was less a brand than the flavour of home, and long before it sat on supermarket shelves, it lived in one small shop in Bikaner. That shop opened in 1937. Ganga Bishan Agarwal, known to everyone as Haldiram, sold sweets and namkeen, but it was his bhujia that set him apart. Working from a family recipe credited to an aunt, he swapped besan for moth beans and made the strands finer and crisper. Then he did something any marketer would admire: he named it Dungar Sev, after Bikaner's ruler, Maharaja Dungar Singh, borrowing a measure of local pride and trust. Demand followed, the family carried the recipe to Kolkata, and a manufacturing base took shape there. A larger plant came up in Jaipur in 1970, and Delhi followed in the early 1990s.
A Haldiram’s spokesperson points out that “it was a remarkable journey from a small namkeen store to becoming a well-known name in the food industry that has become a part of the daily life of many Indians. The business started from making bhujia that was famous only among the people in Bikaner. The biggest challenge had been to take the traditional taste beyond Bikaner. The big step in this journey was the move to Delhi. It was that moment that opened new opportunities, but we made sure that we preserve the recipes and traditions of the company. Through the years, the brand developed in many directions but continued following its core principle: food must be simple and familiar to different generations of people.”
Growth did happen to Haldiram’s, but it came with family complications. As the founder's descendants spread across cities, the business splintered into separate arms, with Bikaner's branch becoming Bikaji, and names, trademarks and territories were contested for years. The fragmentation also built something unusual: a brand with deep regional roots in every market it touched. It was only in 2022 that the Delhi and Nagpur snack businesses were demerged and merged into a single entity, Haldiram Snacks Food, with the Delhi family holding 56 per cent and the Nagpur family 44 per cent.
The scale that followed is hard to ignore. Haldiram's was named India's largest snack company in 2017, edging past PepsiCo, which went on to report a revenue of around ₹12,800 crore and a net profit of about ₹1,400 crore in FY24. The range now runs past 400 products, from namkeen and mithai to western snacks, ready-to-eat meals and restaurants, and exports account for roughly a tenth of revenue. In 2025, Singapore's Temasek bought a stake of close to 10 per cent at a valuation of nearly $10 billion, with Alpha Wave Ventures also coming on board.
Market share, though, depends on who is counting. Euromonitor puts Haldiram's at close to 13 per cent of India's $6.2 billion savoury snacks market, which includes a vast unorganised segment, while other industry estimates place it at around 40 per cent of the branded category. At the time of its own IPO filing in 2022, Bikaji, which grew from the same family tree, put its share at 8.7 per cent against Haldiram's 36.6 per cent.
What is striking is how long the brand got by on trust rather than noise. Early promotion was low-key, with print ads and hoardings at railway and bus stations, while packaging did the heavy lifting: nitrogen-flushed pouches stretched shelf life to around six months, and stockists, even rival sweet shops, were happy to carry the range. Instead of celebrity blitzes, Haldiram's chose occasions. In 2015, after one of Haldiram's thali featured in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, it printed over 1.5 crore snack packs with the film's logo. A 2023 Holi film by RepIndia showed estranged families patching up over a box of mithai. Lowe Lintas's post-lockdown festive films leaned on nostalgia and the Indian habit of sharing sweets, and 'Dhina Dhin Dha', its first restaurant TVC in 2023, positioned the outlets as a family dining destination.
Lately, the playbook has turned quick-commerce friendly. 'Haldiram's Pack Kiya Kya?' nudged travellers to carry ready-to-eat meals; the Diwali push 'Tyohar ke har tohfe me, Haldiram's' paired a helicopter-led film with influencer and performance marketing; and this Raksha Bandhan, 'Keh Do Dil Ki Baat, Haldiram's Ke Saath' built a virtual mithai shop on Zepto, with a scannable leaflet in every order.
Today, Haldiram's sits at an interesting crossroads. Talk of a stock-market debut has circulated for months, though no listing date has been confirmed. The real test lies elsewhere: staying as comforting as the packet in a grandmother's cupboard while competing with Bikaji, Balaji Wafers and ITC's Bingo in a market that keeps growing. If its history is any guide, it may come down to what Haldiram Ji bet on in 1937: a taste people trust enough to pass on.
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