How Nirala is
trying to keep
pace with
changing trends
The Nirala Sweets outlet in Y Bar in DHA is almost as far as you can get from the Fleming Road shop where the troupe made its humble start selling halwa puri and mithai circa 1950. A customer came in to the memory the former day and asked for milk dumplings [rass malai] and white fudge [barfi], says Ahmer Farooq, who is irregular in control at Nirala.
Modernising the line to maintain step with evolving tastes, and trends, has been one of the primary concerns of the party in late years. We had a study done and institute that people aged 15 to 30 like traditional sweets, but dont always take to liking them, says Ahmer.
Under his elder brother Faisal, CEO since 1997, Nirala has tried to undertake this un-cool image. Weve introduced fancy packaging and a selling strategy which made the mithai look cooler, Ahmer says. Each generation of the house has modernised and contributed to the company.
The occupation was founded by Ahmers grandfather Taj Din, who used to bind copies of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy word of the Sikhs, at a publishing house in Amritsar before moving to Lahore in 1947. He plant employment as a ligature at Taj Book Publisher and saved up around money to give a little shop selling breakfast and sweets on Fleming Road a few days later. Back in the day, it was traditional to sell breakfast in the mornings and mithai in the evenings, Ahmer says. Over the following ten years, the shop expanded its array of sweets to include gulab jamun, chum chum, amratiya, pateesa and rubri.
The sweets were a flourishing success and in the early 1960s, Taj Din and his son Farooq Ahmed, who had started running at the workshop after sitting his 12th grade exams, decided to expands this side of the business. The mithai sales were far higher than breakfast, says Ahmer.
Farooq also pushed to have the line a more distinct identity. A larger store was bought opposite the old shop on Fleming Road. Glass shelves were installed to make the sweets a better display. The stock was named Nirala (different) Sweets Mart.
Taj Din retired in 1975 and died in 1984. He did not recognize how to learn or write but from what I see he had a particular kinship with his customers that me and my comrade will never have. I frequently come across customers who remembered my grandfather adding a few extra pieces of mithai to their box, says Ahmer. He knew that giving incentives, to clients or to employees, is good for business.
Also in the later 1980s, the grass on Fleming Road was closed down as sales run low. Most wealthy people had shifted to Gulberg, Cantt and Garden Town. So my mother did the same, says Ahmer. New outlets were set up on Jail Road and then Moon Market, Hafeez Centre and The Mall. The mithai workstation was shifted to a 15-kanal space on Waris Road from the Walled City.
Since Ahmers brother took care in 1997, Nirala has added another nine shops in Lahore, five elsewhere in Pakistan, and one apiece in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. It has introduced a new range of customised mithai, special packages for weddings and birth celebrations, and canned mithai with a longer shelf-life for export purposes. Recipes have been computerised to induce production more efficient. Educated staff have replaced the old moonshis, adds Ahmer.
More than 250 employees now play for the company, but it isnt always easy getting people with strong qualifications. Ahmer remembers two graduates that were leased to run production. Both left within a month. Their families thought their jobs would strike their chances of acquiring a wife from an affluent and respected family since they worked for a halwai, he says.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 5th, 2011.
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