Keventers: From serving the British Raj to the Indian millennial, how one company transformed India’s dairy industry
Probably every Indian millennial would be aware of the Instagrammable glass bottles of Keventers milkshakes. After all, the company has been serving delicious dairy products since 1925. However, it’s not just milkshakes that make Keventers what it is. Once synonymous with the ice cream carts in Lutyens’ Delhi during the British Raj, the brand is undergoing a revival of sorts. After a few dormant decades, the company is now being resurrected as a hip brand for today’s new age customers. This is not, however, the first time in the history of the brand that it has emerged out of a crisis stronger than ever. The almost century old history of the company is full of interesting stories, of twists & turns, of crises & revivals. This is the story of Keventers - The Original Milkshake!
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Although Keventers has been around since 1925, the real journey of Keventers began in 1889. Edward Keventer, a Swedish agricultural scientist, is invited by the British government to India. The goal: modernize the British colony’s dairy industry. Over the next 50 years, Keventer revolutionized the dairy industry in India, the effects of which continue to reverberate today. While most of us are aware of Verghese Kurien, the White Revolution and Amul, few know about Edward Keventer. Keventer is the one who gave birth to the scientific, industry-scale dairy farming in India that was later revolutionized by Kurien. Without Keventer and his radical improvements in India’s cattle breeding & husbandry practices, the country’s dairy industry would never have been profitable.
In 1894, Keventer decided to take an entrepreneurial leap and took over the ailing Aligarh Dairy Farm to start the production of milk & milk products like cheese & butter. India being a milk loving country, Keventer was soon able to turn the dairy farm profitable. In 1925, he decided to formalize his success in the form of the Keventers brand. He set up a sprawling dairy farm in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri area and set about creating one of India’s leading dairy brands. Keventers expanded to all the major cities in the British Raj including Calcutta, Darjeeling, Simla & Lahore. Soon enough, Keventers became massively popular for its fresh dairy products like milk, cheese & butter. The company is also credited with creating some of the most iconic dairy products in the world - classic Indian favorite, the Cassata ice cream, is actually a creation of Keventers.
After the demise of Edward Keventer in 1937, his nephew sold the brand to Ramkrishna Dalmia in 1940, one of the leading industrialists at the time. Dalmia further expanded the distribution network for the brand as well as expanded the product line to include more dairy items like shakes. In 1960, the company started supplying milk powder to the Indian Army. Everything was going well for the Keventers brand. However, came the 1970s and the brand was suddenly in choppy waters. The Indian government planned to turn Chanakyapuri into a diplomatic enclave due to which the Keventers plant had to be shut down. Over time, Ramkrishna Dalmia lost interest in the brand and turned his focus to his other business interests. However, a handful of distributors, like the one in Connaught Place, Delhi, continued to run a handful of Keventers outlets without any formal recognition from Dalmia.
This phase of dormancy for Keventers came to an end in 2015 when Agastya Dalmia (the grandson of Ramkrishan Dalmia) decided to revive the Keventers brand. He teamed up with his long-time friend Aman Arora and Sohrab Sitaram, an experienced restaurateur who ran the famous Asian restaurant chain Chi Kitchen & Bar. The trio re-launched the brand with 20 recipes and a single outlet at Select Citywalk in New Delhi. Suddenly, everyone was taking a trip down the memory lane with their parents & grandparents who had been regulars at Keventers outlets in their heyday. The brand closed the first year with over INR 4 crores in sales. In 2017 the brand decided to venture abroad, with outlets in Dubai & Kenya. Today, the brand has over 250 outlets across the globe and has no plans of slowing down. The company is on target to cross $100 million in annual sales by FY 2025-26. The original milkshake is back and it’s here to stay for another century & beyond!