Kannauj, India — Gopal Kumar pulled aside the bulb of a flower and pointed to the place the roots of the petals had turned somewhat black inside. That is when the marigolds odor the very best and are prepared for selecting, he mentioned. He picked a pink rose subsequent and sniffed. “You can only find this smell in Kannauj,” he mentioned.
Kumar has been rising flowers outdoors Kannauj – a sleepy city nestled on the fertile plains of the Ganges in northern India – for 50 years. His flowers are used within the making of ittars, pure perfumes produced by distilling flowers, herbs, vegetation or spices over a base oil, which takes on the scent of the uncooked materials.
As soon as a complicated kingdom in northern India, Kannauj is famed for its manufacturing of ittars utilizing an historical methodology known as deg-bhakpa. This can be a gradual, laborious strategy of hydrodistillation devoid of all fashionable gear that has survived in lots of of small-scale distilleries throughout Kannauj and in surrounding cities.
Regardless of a protracted heritage of perfume and scent, financial liberalisation of the late Eighties led to a interval of decline in India’s ittar business as low-cost, alcohol-based perfumes have been launched from the West. Till the Nineties, there have been 700 distilleries in Kannauj, however their numbers dropped to 150 to 200 by the mid-2000s. Making an attempt to compete on value, some producers began utilizing alcohol as the bottom reasonably than costlier sandalwood oil, degrading the standard and purity of the merchandise.
Submit-liberalisation, reasonably than promoting on to customers, the overwhelming majority of ittars and important oils produced in India have been exported to different companies – both as an enter into perfumery and beauty industries within the West or to the tobacco business. Rosewater is an ingredient in chewing tobacco.
However up to now few years, a number of younger, predominantly feminine Indian entrepreneurs have noticed a niche out there between these indigenous artisanal expertise and India’s thriving client tradition, and a brand new set of homegrown manufacturers has emerged.
A brand new wave of perfume
Boond Fragrances is one such firm, established in Could 2021 through the pandemic by a sister and brother, Krati and Varun Tandon, to assist protect and lift consciousness of the perfume-making traditions of Kannuaj and to help native artisans.
“Our father was a perfume trader and at-home perfumer,” Krati Tandon defined at her household dwelling in Kannuaj. ”We grew up round perfumers and perfumeries in Kannauj, and you actually soak up what’s occurring. However we additionally noticed over time how some perfumeries began shutting down, and a few are fearful about their futures.”
The duo wished to make ittars accessible. “The idea was really for us to bring it to customers – people like us who, if we knew something like this existed, would appreciate it,” Krati mentioned.
Divrina Dhingra, creator of The Fragrance Undertaking: Journeys By Indian Perfume, agrees. “Ittars have a marketing problem actually. In many ways they are stuck in the past,” she mentioned. “But it is also an awareness problem. I don’t know if many people know this industry still exists, the way in which it exists, what it does, what is actually available.”
The preliminary response to Boond, Krati mentioned, has been overwhelming with greater than 10,000 orders dispatched within the 12 months as much as October, a sizeable quantity for the younger enterprise.
Gross sales rise in winter, the Indian marriage ceremony season and the time when Christmas orders come from overseas. The corporate mentioned it expects gross sales to double within the subsequent two years however declined to share its income numbers.
“Recently, people have again started realising what synthetic perfume is and what real perfume is,” Krati mentioned. “Particularly post-COVID, there has been a transformation back towards the real thing.”
As per market analysis agency Technavio, the Indian perfumery business will improve by about 15 p.c compounded yearly for the subsequent 5 years. Whereas market tendencies are at the moment dominated by commerce between companies, the variety of Indian companies promoting their very own fragrances on to customers is rising.
Indian magnificence author Aparna Gupta mentioned there’s been “a discernible shift, a renaissance if you will, in the domestic market’s attitude towards these traditional fragrances”, that are predominantly marketed on Instagram, and demand for them has gained “considerable momentum”.
She credited manufacturers like Boond which are concentrating on conventional, time-tested ittar scents for enjoying “a pivotal role” on this resurgence. “They are not just selling ittars; they are reintroducing a forgotten art form to a generation that is eager to reconnect with its heritage,” she mentioned.
Then there are different new manufacturers like Kastoor and Naso Profumi which are focusing on “younger consumers by blending traditional elements with modern nuances” – as an example, Kastoor’s Mahal with its distinctive mix of patchouli and lotus, Gupta mentioned.
A practice of scent
It’s unclear precisely how lengthy ittars and important oils – made when vapours of elements are extracted however no base oil is used – have been produced by hydrodistillation in India. Nevertheless, just lately distillation stills excavated from the cities of the Indus Valley point out a tradition of scent in some type courting again to about 3,000 BC.
Round Kannuaj, many locals attribute the invention of ittars to the Mughal queen Nur Jahan, who lived within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. Nevertheless, Sanskrit texts point out that the world was already a centre of perfume earlier than Mughal occasions. Historians imagine the follow was invigorated with new elements and distillation strategies additional developed by the Mughal courtroom.
Manufacturing is very seasonal, and February in Kannuaj is the season of Damask rose. The warming winter solar was excessive within the sky by the point a motorcycle arrived on the distillery of Prem and Firm, a jute sack tied to its rear. Dinesh, the distiller, instantly weighed, inspected and emptied the dusky pink flowers into water inside a big copper vat known as a deg.
Inside minutes, the rim of the deg has been sealed with a metallic lid and an hermetic layer of water and clay, and a bamboo pipe has been linked from the deg to a second, smaller vessel, the bhakpa, which sits in a concrete sink of water.
Every deg is fastened over a furnace fired with wooden or dung, and the distilled vapours cross by the pipes, gathering and condensing within the bhakpa. This bhakpa holds the bottom oil, which over time is imbued with the scent of the distilled materials.
Boond Fragrances use native artisans, resembling Dinesh, to distil each new scents and extra conventional favourites, together with Mitti, the odor of contemporary rain, and Khus, identified for its cooling notes. Only a dab suffices with 6ml (0.2oz) promoting for $20.
The trendy ittar
Kastoor’s founder, Esha Tiwari, needs to alter current perceptions. “Ittars are considered heavy,” she mentioned. “In the earlier times, the ittars were so distinct. They were used by kings and queens as a mode of announcement. But I don’t want to drag you to the 14th century. I will bring this art form to your 21st century.”
Kastoor was arrange in 2021. Throughout analysis and growth, 30-year-old Tiwari, who has a background in advertising and marketing, ran workshops to facilitate data alternate between ittar artisans and fashionable fragrance consultants. The end result was a set of seven “modern ittars”, by which trusted elements are mixed in new, distinctive proportions with 8ml (0.3oz) promoting for $22 to $36. The goal market is middle-class, city customers in search of a totally pure fragrance.
Progress has been fast. Kastoor has one other assortment of ittars within the pipeline, and the variety of artisans it employs has elevated from three initially to 12 to fifteen households throughout Kannauj, Hyderabad and Uttarakhand.
Tiwari discovered the youthful generations of artisanal households have been leaving the business on account of lack of prospects. “They didn’t see the demand,” Tiwari mentioned. “That is where we came in. This is not a one-time hike we are giving to their business. It is a constant change in their livelihoods.”
In line with Tiwari, Kastoor’s turnover is predicted to rise from $120,000 and improve by 5 to six occasions over the subsequent two to 3 years.
Made in India
Along with the home market, these new manufacturers are additionally exporting throughout the globe – to Europe, the US, Japan, Australia and the Center East. The absence of alcohol makes ittars non-haram and appropriate for the non secular functions of each Hindus and Muslims.
The rising curiosity in sustainability and natural merchandise worldwide can be bringing these producers new shoppers.
“In the beauty industry, there has been this entire movement towards natural and what’s local, and so in that sense, ittars fit in really nicely,” Dhingra mentioned.
Worldwide perfumer Yosh Han mentioned that globally, there may be an “increasing desire to decolonise scent” and an “interest in POC [people of colour] brands” due to which a few of these new Indian companies are getting curiosity from overseas.
Again in Kannauj, generations of information and expertise imply the native artisans are completely positioned to take advantage of and modify to those new tendencies whereas selling Indian merchandise.
The title Kastoor comes from the phrase kasturi, which is also called musk, a scent of a deer’s navel. In line with folklore, the deer was enchanted by this scent and looked for it, not understanding that it was coming from itself, Tiwari defined.
“So we have used it as a metaphor,” she smiled. “We are still frantically looking outside, not realising that we are the creators of the world’s most magnanimous scents.”
