The Incense Sticks Manufacturer The company today produces three crore sticks in a day, and boasts of four manufacturing units. In FY22, MDPH clocked a turnover of INR 650 crore.

Mysore Deep Perfumery House (MDPH) was founded in 1992 with its flagship brand, Zed Black by Indore-based Prakash Agrawal. In the last thirty one years, it has come a long way.

The company today produces three crore sticks in a day, and boasts of four manufacturing units. It has in its kitty 1,200+ products, including agarbatti, essential oils, hand sanitizers, packaged tea, dhoopbatti, confectionery, and more under its premium flagship labels Zed Black, Manthan, Orva and Din Din, which are exported to over 40+ countries. In FY22, MDPH clocked a turnover of INR 650 crore.

The core of MDPH is its 4,000+ workforce, which is made up 80% of women who work in all facets of manufacturing, from packing to producing perfume. The business switched its whole employees over to digital payments after demonetisation.

"This was undertaken to support Digital India and this initiative has resulted in women empowerment. The women employees from marginalized societies have total control over the salaries in the bank account as earlier the cash salaries they received had to be given at home and had no control over the expenses," says MDPH's Director Anshul Agrawal.

Making an app for its 300 ground staff members is another step in MDPH's digital transformation, according to Anshul. "We can get real-time data on what the retailers are selling at the point of retail and all our systems are connected to secondary sales where the sales representative can get the updated data on sales," he adds.

MDPH claims to be seeing consistent jumps and double-digit growth for the last five years and now the company has seen 15% quarter-on-quarter growth in revenue this fiscal as well. "After making a mark with incense sticks and puja category, with our foray into F&B, confectionery, we are expecting a turnover of INR 1000 crore by FY27. We are soon planning to increase our global footprint as well," states Ankit Agrawal, another Director, MDPH.

The brothers Ankit and Anshul joined the family firm in 2003–2004 and 2010– 2011, respectively. While IITian Anshul oversees production, infrastructure, IT, purchase, accounts and finance, Ankit is in charge of sales, marketing, imports, international exports, fragrance R&D, and legal matters.

Ankit believes that having roots in a small town has both benefits and drawbacks. There are more easily available resources, cheaper land, and shorter travel distances. Furthermore, connectivity has always been an issue when travelling, particularly when the firm first began. Anshul, on the other side, asserts that the biggest difficulty is obtaining the appropriate talent, as many do not want to move from metro areas to tier-II locations.

Facts

>> Year of inception of the company: 1992

>> Turnover for FY 2022-23: INR 650 crore

>> No of employees: 4000

>> Headoffice location: Indore (Madhya Pradesh)