40 Fun Facts About Indian Brands

Bata, which built Batanagar near Kolkata in the 1930s, was founded in 1894 in Zlín, a town in which country?

Czech Republic: the T. & A. Baťa Shoe Company started on 21 September 1894 in the Moravian town of Zlín, then Austria-Hungary, and Bata India was only incorporated in 1931.

Wipro, now an IT giant, was incorporated in 1945 at Amalner in Maharashtra to make which product?

Cooking oil was the business of Western India Vegetable Products until Azim Premji, who took over at 21 in 1966, steered the firm into computers in the 1980s.

MRF, India's largest tyre maker, was started in 1946 by K. M. Mammen Mappillai in Madras making what?

Toy balloons came first; the company only moved into tread rubber in 1952, and the initials stand for Madras Rubber Factory.

Which washing powder, priced at ₹3.50 a kilo against Surf's ₹13 in 1969, did Karsanbhai Patel name after his daughter?

Nirma comes from Nirupama, Patel's daughter; the government chemist sold 15 to 20 packets a day on his way to the office, and the 'Washing Powder Nirma' jingle did the rest.

Which cola, created in 1977 after Coca-Cola quit India rather than disclose its formula, was sold to Coca-Cola in 1993?

Thums Up went to Coca-Cola in 1993 alongside Gold Spot and Limca for $60 million, and the returning giant ended up selling its old rival under the 'Taste the Thunder' line.

The Tata Nano, unveiled in January 2008 as the world's lowest-priced production car, was aimed at what showroom price?

₹1 lakh, or ₹100,000, was the target; the Singur factory in West Bengal was abandoned after farmers protested the land acquisition, and production at Sanand in Gujarat ended in 2018.

Tata Motors paid about $2.3 billion in 2008 to buy Jaguar and Land Rover from which carmaker?

Ford sold both marques for US$2.23 billion in a deal completed on 2 June 2008, and Tata set up Jaguar Land Rover Limited as a British-registered subsidiary to hold them.

Which airline, returned to the Tata group in January 2022, has had a bowing, turbaned Maharaja as its mascot since 1946?

Air India's Maharaja was drawn in 1946 by commercial director Bobby Kooka and J. Walter Thompson artist Umesh Rao; the airline had begun as Tata Airlines in 1932 before nationalisation in 1953.

Nusli Wadia, whose group controls biscuit maker Britannia, is the grandson of which founder of a neighbouring nation?

Muhammad Ali Jinnah's daughter Dina married Neville Wadia, and their son Nusli succeeded his father as chairman in 1977 and heads the Wadia Group, whose holdings also include Bombay Dyeing.

Lakmé, launched by the Tatas in 1952 at Nehru's urging, takes its name from a French opera about which goddess?

Lakshmi becomes Lakmé in French, the opera's title; Nehru worried Indian women were spending scarce foreign exchange on imported beauty products, and the Tatas sold the brand to Hindustan Unilever in 1998 for ₹200 crore.

Which brand's polka-dot-frocked girl has fronted topical ads since Sylvester da Cunha created her in 1967?

Amul's hoardings have commented on the news for decades; the girl was executed by da Cunha's agency ASP with art director Eustace Fernandes after it won the account from FCB Ulka.

Which software firm, founded in Pune in 1981 by seven engineers with $250, was the first Indian company on Nasdaq?

Infosys listed American depositary receipts on Nasdaq in March 1999, eighteen years after N. R. Narayana Murthy and six colleagues started it; the firm moved to Bengaluru in 1983.

Flipkart, started in a Bengaluru flat in 2007 by two unrelated Bansals who had worked at Amazon, first sold only what?

Books were all the site sold at its launch in October 2007; within eleven years Walmart paid US$16 billion for a 77% controlling stake.

SBI, the subcontinent's oldest commercial lender, descends from which institution founded on 2 June 1806?

Bank of Calcutta was renamed Bank of Bengal, merged with the Bombay and Madras presidency banks into the Imperial Bank of India in 1921, and became the State Bank of India on 1 July 1955.

Zomato, begun in July 2008 as a restaurant-listing site by two Bain & Company consultants, was first called what?

FoodieBay became Zomato in November 2010, partly to avoid a naming clash with eBay and partly because founders Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah were unsure they would 'just stick to food'.

Paytm, whose parent One97 floated in November 2021 in what was then India's largest IPO, is short for which phrase?

Pay through mobile is the expansion of the name; founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma's One97 Communications raised ₹18,300 crore at a US$20 billion valuation in the 2021 float.

OYO's Ritesh Agarwal won a $100,000 fellowship in 2013 from which investor who pays the young to skip college?

Peter Thiel's fellowship backed Agarwal two years after he founded Oravel Stays in 2011, the budget-hotel network that relaunched as OYO Rooms in May 2013.

Royal Enfield, built in Chennai since a 1955 tie-up with Madras Motors and owned by Eicher, began in which English town?

Redditch in Worcestershire was home to the Enfield Cycle Company, which built its first motorcycle in 1901; the Bullet assembled under licence in Madras from 1955 is the longest-lived motorcycle design in history.

The Bajaj Chetak scooter, which once carried a ten-year waiting list, was named after the horse of which Rajput warrior?

Maharana Pratap's horse Chetak gave the Vespa-derived scooter its name; marketed as 'Hamara Bajaj', it was revived as an electric scooter unveiled in October 2019.

Hero MotoCorp, the Munjals' two-wheeler maker, bore which Japanese partner's name until the venture ended in 2011?

Honda and Hero Cycles formed Hero Honda in 1984; the board voted to unwind the venture in December 2010 and the firm became Hero MotoCorp on 29 July 2011, by then India's largest two-wheeler maker.

The Hindustan Ambassador, built at Uttarpara from 1957 to 2014, was based on which British saloon?

Morris Oxford Series III underpinned the car that carried ministers and taxi passengers for six decades; Hindustan Motors sold the Ambassador brand to Groupe PSA in 2017 for about US$8.3 million.

Sunil Mittal, whose Bharti group launched Airtel in Delhi in 1995, started out in Ludhiana in 1976 making what?

Bicycle crankshafts were the first product of Bharti Enterprises, started with ₹20,000; Mittal moved on to importing Suzuki generators, then push-button phones, before winning a GSM licence.

Haldiram's began in 1937 as a sweets and namkeen shop run by Ganga Bhishen Agarwal in which Rajasthan city?

Bikaner gave its name to the Bikaneri bhujia the shop sold; in 2022 the Delhi and Nagpur family branches merged their packaged-snack arms, splitting ownership 56% to 44%.

MDH's turbaned spice king Dharampal Gulati rebuilt in Delhi after Partition drove his family from which city?

Sialkot was home to Mahashian Di Hatti, the family spice shop Gulati joined after leaving school at ten in 1933 and trying carpentry and rice trading; his moustached, pearl-necklaced portrait went on every packet.

Godrej, patentee of the first springless lock, made 12.83 lakh of what for India's first general election?

Steel ballot boxes poured out at 15,000 a day for four months, with an internal locking lever that shop-floor worker Nathalal Panchal designed after more than 50 prototypes.

Which Ayurvedic goods firm's name is what patients called the Kolkata physician who founded it in 1884?

Dabur was what patients called S. K. Burman and his medicines; he formulated Ayurvedic remedies for cholera, constipation and malaria in the 1880s, and the firm still sells Chyawanprash.

Boroline, the antiseptic cream a Bengali merchant launched in 1929, shows which animal on its green tube?

An elephant, inspired by Ganesha and standing for strength, made it the 'haatiwala cream'; Gour Mohan Dutta built the name from boro for boric acid and the Latin oleum, oil.

Gattu, the mischievous boy with a paint bucket who became Asian Paints' mascot in 1954, was drawn by which cartoonist?

R. K. Laxman drew Gattu for a firm four friends had started in a garage in Girgaon, Mumbai, in February 1942; the boy appealed to the middle classes the company was courting.

Which TV maker's 1980s ads paired a horned, tailed devil with the line 'Neighbour's envy, owner's pride'?

Onida's devil first appeared in a print ad in 1982 and on television in 1983–84; G. L. Mirchandani and Vijay Mansukhani had started the firm, Mirc Electronics, in Mumbai in 1981.

ITC, now known for Aashirvaad atta and Sunfeast biscuits, was registered in Kolkata in 1910 under what name?

Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited became India Tobacco Company in 1970 and I.T.C. in 1974; since 2001 the letters officially stand for nothing, and the hotels arm was spun off in January 2025.

Bisleri, bought by the Chauhan family in 1969 for ₹4 lakh, was named after a 19th-century inventor from which country?

Italy's Felice Bisleri created an alcohol remedy of that name; Italian doctor Cesari Rossi and businessman Khushroo Suntook began bottling water under it at Thane in 1966 before the struggling brand was sold.

Lijjat Papad was started on 15 March 1959 by seven Gujarati women on a Girgaum rooftop with a loan of how much?

₹80, lent by social worker Chhaganlal Karamsi Parekh, bought the ingredients for four packets of papad on day one; the co-operative had 45,000 members by 2021 and turnover above ₹1,600 crore.

Rooh Afza, the rose-red sharbat of iftar tables, was formulated in 1906 by the founder of which Unani house?

Hamdard's Hakim Hafiz Abdul Majeed formulated it in Ghaziabad and launched it from Old Delhi; since 1948 separate Hamdard firms in three countries have each made their own.

Balvant Parekh, once a peon sleeping in a timber trader's warehouse, launched Fevicol in 1959 through which company?

Pidilite Industries was the 1959 rename of Parekh Dyechem, a dye and pigment business he had started with his brother Sushil at Jacob Circle, Mumbai, in 1954.

Which airline, India's biggest since overtaking Jet Airways in 2012, ordered 500 Airbus jets in June 2023?

IndiGo's 500-jet deal was, at the time, the largest aircraft order in commercial aviation history; the carrier had flown its first service, Delhi to Imphal via Guwahati, on 4 August 2006.

Which Tata–Singapore Airlines venture, launched in 2015, merged into the national flag carrier in November 2024?

Vistara ceased operations on 12 November 2024 after merging into the Tata group's flag carrier, ending nearly a decade that began with a Delhi–Mumbai flight on 9 January 2015.

Ajay Singh relaunched the former ModiLuft as which low-cost airline, whose first flight was Delhi-Mumbai on 24 May 2005?

SpiceJet was Ajay Singh's 2005 relaunch of the airline Satish Kumar Modi had started as an air-taxi firm in 1984 and flown as ModiLuft, with Lufthansa's technical help from 1993, until it stopped in 1996.

Zerodha, the discount broker the Kamath brothers started in August 2010, pairs 'zero' with a Sanskrit word meaning what?

Barrier is 'rodha' in Sanskrit, so the name promises trading with no obstacles; Nithin and Nikhil Kamath began with six employees and ₹2 crore in seed money, mostly from Nithin's savings.

When Mukesh and Anil Ambani's feud split the Reliance empire in 2005, who brokered the division of the group?

Their mother Kokilaben intervened after a bitter public feud to broker a deal splitting the RIL group's businesses into two; Dhirubhai Ambani had begun the empire as a commodities trader in 1958 and incorporated Reliance Textiles in 1966.

Roughly what share of Tata Sons, the group's holding company, is owned by philanthropic trusts endowed by the family?

About two-thirds, some 66% of the equity, sits with the Tata trusts, which is why much of the group's profit flows to charity; the Shapoorji Pallonji group holds roughly 18%.