The New Business of Tradition

As a child, Nathwani watched his father negotiate raw material purchases, discuss sales strategies with his team and step in when an unexpected crisis hit the factory. There were no formal management lessons, but there was an education taking place nonetheless. “When you spend your early years in that kind of atmosphere, you don’t need formal lessons,” says Nathwani, Director & CEO, House of Gulab. “You naturally start picking up things and learn how a company runs.” Today, that early education has translated into a very different kind of responsibility. Nathwani is not merely helping run a family business; he is expanding its definition.

Under his leadership, the group has grown from Rs. 700 crore to 3,000 crore in revenue, launched three new brands and built its own e‑commerce platform. Its latest bets stretch beyond its traditional edible‑oil business into premium cold pressed oils, everyday organic staples and luxury self‑care.

In Nathwani’s world, joining the family business was never presented as a compromise or fallback. “Being born and raised in a business family, I was naturally drawn to this world,” Nathwani says. “It never felt like a forced choice, but rather a natural next inclination.”

That familiarity, however, doesn’t make succession easy. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for a next‑generation leader is walking into a company where many of the people around you have been there longer than you have been alive. “You are dealing with family members whose experience in the company is more than your age,” he says. They built the teams. They understand the processes. They have earned the trust of employees and partners over decades. A successor cannot simply arrive with a new title and expect people to follow. “You cannot just demand respect. To make people actually listen to you, you have to prove yourself.”

Perhaps the clearest measure of Nathwani’s evolution as a business leader is in the numbers. Over more than a decade under his leadership, House of Gulab has grown from Rs. 700 crore to 3,000 crore in revenue. But the transformation hasn’t been limited to scale. Nathwani has used the existing business as a foundation for a portfolio of new consumer brands.

Gulab Goodness expanded the group into cold‑pressed edible oils. True Story Organics moved into everyday staples. And Gulori, the group’s latest launch, takes the business into luxury self‑care. The strategy is deliberate: take the trust built around the Gulab name and extend it into adjacent categories where consumers are increasingly willing to pay for quality, provenance and premiumisation. The group has also built its own e‑commerce platform, allowing it to reach consumers across India rather than depending entirely on traditional distribution.

For Nathwani, diversification isn’t about abandoning the core. It is about extending it. “Our family legacy is all about making the finest edible oils for families,” he says. “I am powering this legacy by taking that same intent and diversifying it into other categories and products.”

The larger ambition is clear. “Eventually, we want to reach a stage where you can have all the everyday staples on your kitchen shelves, with every single one of them carrying the trust and name of the Gulab Group.”

One of Nathwani’s most consequential decisions was also one of his riskiest: moving into premium, cold‑pressed edible oils. In a country where food products remain highly price‑sensitive, convincing consumers to pay a premium for an everyday staple is not easy. Inside the company, the idea initially attracted more laughter than enthusiasm. “Everyone at the company laughed initially and thought that it would completely fail,” Nathwani recalls. But the willingness to take that risk reflects a broader shift in the group’s thinking. Health, provenance and quality are increasingly becoming part of purchasing decisions, creating space for premium products even in categories historically driven by price.