This Indian city is where most gulal is made, one company alone produces 6,000 tonnes

Holi is celebrated with much fervour in Vrindavan. (Photo: Unsplash)

While the festival of Holi is celebrated differently in several states across India, one thing remains common — gulal, the dry colour used to spray, sprinkle and smear people with. This is followed by an embrace and the slogan "Bura na mano, holi Hain" (please don’t mind, its Holi!). Streets, buildings and all public places get a coat of gulal during Holi. So, imagine the amount of gulal being used on this day! “There is no Holi without gulal. We manufacture gulal all through the year but it’s never enough to meet the demand from the market,” says Manu Garg, co-founder of Radha Kishan Color World. The Cock brand owned by the company produces a whopping 6,000 tonnes of gulal every year.

Gulal from Cock brand.

Hing to Holi
In 1951, Garg’s grandfather Gopal Das set up a small shop in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, to make compound hing (asafoetida) and gulal. Those days gulal was sold in huge gunny bags.

Garg’s father Shyam Behari introduced the branded format of gulal in small pouches which created a huge stir in the market. “People were very sceptical of packaged gulal at a higher price. Who will pay more for an item like gulal for just a day’s celebration, they would ask. But my father and uncle were steadfast and introduced multiple weights to cover a larger market. It took four-five years for people to accept branded gulal in a pouch,” says Garg.

Traditionally, gulal is made by mixing coloured dyes to a base of corn starch and arrowroot powder. The mixture is then dried in fields and later ground to a fine powder. This takes several days with unseasonal rains threatening to destroy entire batches with a single drizzle. The introduction of automated machines in 2010 shook things up. Now starch to dry gulal takes only a few seconds.

Manu Garg, co-founder, Radha Kishan Color World, Hathras, Uttar Pradesh.

According to Abhishek Agrawal, managing director, Matka Colors, one of the leading gulal manufacturers in Hathras, India consumes around 8,000-9,000 tonnes of gulal during holi. “Most of the gulal is used in the Vrindavan-Brij area of Uttar Pradesh. Holi is a huge festival here and it’s celebrated over a period of seven-10 days. The 800-odd Iskcon temples spread across the world is also a major consumer of gulal,” says Agrawal, whose grandfather Krishan Kumar Agrawal started the business in 1975. Currently the company makes around a tonne of gulal every year.

A city of colours

Holi in Vrindavan. (Photo via Unsplash)

Hathras a city in the Brij region of Uttar Pradesh is the hub of gulal-making in India. There are over a dozen gulal factories here. Some units are also based in Kanpur and Mathura. So, what made Hathras, a sleepy town known for its temples and a fort, a hotbed of gulal production? “Holi started in Brijbhumi and used to be played by Lord Krishna and Radha. Hathras also has an industrial past with the earliest cotton factory here. The availability of skilled and unskilled labour in huge numbers may also have contributed,” believes Garg who has plans to launch a "fun Holi park" in the country where families can celebrate the festival amid coloured water pools, thrilling rides and fun gadgets.

The use of gulal is not just restricted to the festival of Holi these days. “Abroad, especially in the United States, gulal is used throughout the year as a way to attract people at events, festivals, parades, rallies, etc.,” says Agrawal. Bollywood and the television industry are also some of the biggest buyers of gulal. Red and pink are the hottest-selling colours followed by blue, popularised by Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh in the film Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (2013).

Pink and red are the most popular colours in gulal, followed by blue.

Chemical versus organic

Health and safety concerns regarding the chemicals in gulal has led many manufacturers to shift to non-toxic alternatives. “We started making non-toxic gulal in 2010 after realising that people were wary of using gulal because of the chemicals used. So, we did a lot of R&D and came up with a range of non-toxic colours which are more gentle on the skin. We are now experimenting with turmeric, heena and beetroot to make a herbal range,” says Garg. The company is also in talks with Banke Bihari and other temples in Vrindavan for flowers to make gulal. Coffee, chocolate and vanilla fragrance gulal is also in the works.

Cock brand is in talks with temples for flowers to make herbal gulal. (Photo via Unsplash)

“We use edible corn starch and dyes extracted from food and flowers for the colour. But the volume of the business is such that we can’t depend solely on colours from food and flowers. So, while 20 per cent of the colours is made in-house, the rest is outsourced from the market. The companies that claim to make gulal only from flowers and no chemicals are taking the consumers for a ride. If gulal were to be made only using flowers, there will be no flowers left in the country. So, at the end of the day every company is using synthetically-made food-dyes,” says Agrawal. While the base ingredients for  making gulal always remain the same, each factory has its own secret formulation. “The idea is to make the brightest, most vibrant range of colours that will make the consumers pick your brand over others,” says Agrawal.

Packets of Cock gulal ready to be shipped to stores.

While gulal sold in India doesn’t need any safety or health certification, the same has to go through stringent regulations before being exported to the US and European markets. “Gulal is subjected to a range of tests which includes test for heavy metals and toxicity. The norms were made even tighter after a gulal-related explosion at an event in Taiwan. Now, there is also a test for explosives,” adds Agrawal, an MTech in nanotechnology. The sale of Chinese goods in the form of colours, toys and balloons has also dwindled and is close to zero now. Earlier, China's exports to India on the festival of Holi stood at about Rs 10,000 crore every year. “People now prefer to buy Indian-made products even if they cost slightly more than the Chinese ones. That’s because of the emotions attached to Holi and innovation in the Indian products,” says Agrawal.

So, how is Holi celebrated in Brijbhumi? “It’s the most important day in the calendar for us. Just like people measure the snow in feet in Kashmir, we measure the gulal on the floor in feet during Holi. We may have shifted to gulal in pouches but bring out the gunny bags during Holi. And it’s never store-bought thandai. My mother makes it herself, by grinding the almonds and other dried fruits. The highlight is always the piping hot samosas,” says Garg.