After New York launch, Kannauj-based perfumery company brings its global 'Zighrana' brand to India

An Indian essence and wellness products company hailing from the country's perfumery capital Kannauj is launching its global brand of perfumes and attars in India, a year after it introduced the product line in New York in a first of its kind effort to bring the homeland’s traditional fragrance industry at the world stage.

The ‘Zighrana’ brand, comprising perfumes, attars and essential oils, has been launched in the Indian market, bringing a line of “fine-tuned” products to consumers in India through online retail.

Last year, on February 14, the Indian essence and wellness products company Zighrana had launched a signature Made in India perfume in New York, inspired by Indian spices and traditional scents, in collaboration with Michelin-star chef Vikas Khanna.

Through the launch of its flagship perfume “‘Vikas Khanna by Zighrana” at the Consulate General of India in New York, the Zighrana family, which is the producer of traditional Indian attar and essential oils since 1911, had made its foray in the global fragrance industry.

Zighrana owner and entrepreneur Swapnil Pathak Sharma has said that her brand offers world class perfumes and fragrances while remaining rooted in Indian culture and history.

After a year of operating in the New York market, she has now taken the global brand to India.

“We were fortunate to have gotten the opportunity to bring out our product in the heart of the global market - there can be no other city more globalised than New York. The exposure we got here in New York was enormous,” she said.

Sharma added that through the launch in New York, “we, most importantly, learnt on various important aspects, be it packaging, quality or branding; every single thing was a unique learning here”.

She expressed confidence that the Zighrana product today was “at par with any major global brand in the perfume market".

“And this high-quality product is what I am taking back to India. Coming from a modest city of Kannauj, the exposure of the New York market has helped us a lot to redefine and fine tune the product. This presented us with an opportunity to take this global product - having its origin in India - back to the Indian market,” she said.

The product line includes specialised Attars -- Rose, Mitti and Jasmine -- as well as perfumes, including a fragrance designed to celebrate ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ on the occasion of India’s 75th Independence Day as well as the flagship perfume ‘Vikas Khanna by Zighrana’ that is a “unique blend of spices like cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, sandalwood, jasmine, and rose which have come to define the unique smells of India for more than a millennia''.

Zighrana’s parent company has a family history of creating fragrances since 1911. Sharma is the fourth generation entrepreneur and aims to take her family’s traditional business of Indian essence and wellness products to the global stage through Zighrana and its products.

Her father Akhilesh Pathak, whose family has been in the business of fragrances, perfumes and essential oils for over 100 years, has said that the global fragrance industry is estimated to be over 24 billion dollars and the fragrance market is set to grow exponentially in the coming years due to focus on personal care, increasing disposable income and other factors.

“We have come to a perfume market after being in perfumery for over a century,” Sharma said, adding that being a producer of attars and essential oils since 1911, the company has deep roots, traditional knowledge and in depth understanding of the perfume industry.

Building on the 111 year old legacy of her family, Sharma had ventured into the fragrance and wellness market in 2015 and created a brand called Aromazeia that offered Ayurvedic products.

She stressed the importance of empowering girls and women by providing education and employment opportunities. "Technological innovations need to be harnessed to ensure providing education, skill development, financial inclusion and access to credit and finance to girls and women,” she said.

“Today the world is changing, especially in India we see there is a paradigm shift from women’s development to rather women-led development. Even in G20 which India is currently chairing, one of the priorities of the Government of India is women-led development. This is a huge push to our efforts of gender equality back at home,” she said.

With International Women’s Day approaching next month, Sharma exhorted women and girls to not be deterred by difficulties and challenges.

“There will be a lot of phases in your life in which you might take a small pause, or there will be times when it might seem difficult to start again, but don’t stop! Every girl and every woman should realise the enormous potential they have and they should follow it with hard work and passion.”