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The sweet smell of success
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Flowers grown in the fields of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu yield universal fragrances that wind their way to the bottles of Christian Dior. Kiran Ranga can beat the French at their own coveted game
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SERIOUS SMELLER Kiran Ranga: `Smelling is strongly linked to culture; and it has a lot to do with food' PHOTO: SAMPATH KUMAR G.P.
This guy is really in love with perfumes. He knows his jasmine from frangipani, and his rose from tuberose. He knows them anatomically, chemically, synthetically. He can perhaps beat the French at their own game — the coveted business of creating new fragrances that create a stir and leave their olfactory mark on the world.
Twenty-eight years old, Kiran Ranga is now at the helm of a 60-year-old family-owned business, famous for its Cycle Brand agarbathis that finds a sacred place in most Indian homes. They also export these incense sticks to 45 countries!
Innovator
Kiran is typical of the second and third-generation brigade of Indian businessmen who stick to their core family business but innovate around it. "Yes, what I do is an extension of our family business but it's not a mundane job. My father was a creative perfumer. I was intrigued by what he did and the idea of creating a perfume was fascinating," says Kiran. While their factories are in Mysore, their corporate houses are based in Bangalore.
A partner in the Rs.160-crore revenue NR Group, Kiran now heads Ripple Fragrances that's just launched deos and perfumes under the brand name DNA. He graduated from Plymouth, U.K., where he specialised in business and perfumery. The perfumery course he studied is one of its kind in the world; Kiran's expertise lies in fragrance creation.
Today, he does two to three hours of serious "smelling" every week. "I've done quite a bit of smelling since my childhood days," he tells me in all earnest. "If you're tuned in and smell on a frequent basis, your sense of smell will definitely develop." Kiran further explains: "Smelling is strongly linked to culture; and it has a lot to do with food. Most often perfumes contain food ingredients of that particular region." And when he gets odour fatigue, the remedy is to smell coffee beans to neutralise it.
What really differentiates his company, says Kiran, is that it has always created and blended its own fragrances. Otherwise, there are seven large perfumery houses across the globe that supply nearly 70 per cent of flavours and fragrances to all international brands of perfume makers and big designer names. And then Kiran lets out a whiff of the intricacy of creating a perfume. A perfume creator works with a palette of around 15,000 materials (called aroma chemicals) of which 90 per cent are synthetic. Any one fragrance will have about 250 of these ingredients, and blending it just right is the real game. And these days, gourmet cuisine orders are on the rise in the perfume industry. The newer fragrances in demand are cucumber, rice, and bamboo — a trend triggered by the French perfume Angel that used a combo of mango and vanilla flavours! Japan's Issey Miyake uses rice extracts to create a very subtle smell.
Kiran's company Nesso has been extracting flower fragrances and exporting it to perfumery houses that cater to labels like Boss, Chanel, and Calvin Kline. It exports to Grasse, the region in France where perfume making is concentrated. France, by the way is, considered the birthplace of perfumes. Tuberose, lotus, mysooru mallige and dundu mallige, frangipani, mimosa, and champa are their major products. "We use 650 kilos of mysooru mallige to get one kilo of concrete wax for the agarbathi. The same amount of flowers yields only 400 grams of the absolute essence."
And don't be surprised the next time you buy a mola of flowers and pay the moon for it. Flowers, being the beauties they are, come at a hefty price in the perfumery business — Rs. 48,000 for a kg of mallige and Rs. 1.2 lakh for a kg of tuberose! "We supply tuberose extracts for Christian Dior's Poison," Kiran informs.
His company has a buyback agreement with farmers in Mysore, Coimbatore, T. Narasipur, Madurai, Ooty and Kodaikanal areas, where these flowers are grown. It also has extraction plants in two of these areas because the essence must be extracted from the flowers within six hours of plucking, and the flower must be in a state of bloom to be plucked.
It's a very delicate industry, as delicate as the flowers themselves. Clients can reject and return essences after this tedious process if they feel the smell is not right. One of the biggest crises the world's perfumery industry faces today is the non-availability of Indian sandalwood oil. In fact at a recent international meet of perfumers, this subject was debated at length. "No synthetic mimic produced has come close to the smell of sandalwood. And that's the beauty of it," says Kiran animatedly.
New venture
His new venture, Ripple Fragrances is hoping to provide "affordable luxury" with the introduction of a range of personal care products under the brand DNA.
There are already deos and perfumes in this series, and in the long run his aim is to make customised perfumes and products. Lia is the incense range he is trying to promote as an air-freshener and for occasions other than worship. Re-diffusers, essential oil burners are Kiran's other fragrant ventures.
BHUMIKA K.
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