Do you know the *history* of our household brand *Kissan*?

Do you know the *history* of our household brand *Kissan*? It is very interesting. Read on. In the early 1930s, a Scottish man named Francis J. Mitchell arrived in British India. He had lost his entire fortune in a business crash & was desperate. He leased 720 acres of barren land in Renala Khurd (now in Pakistan) to grow citrus fruits. The Northwestern Railway had just opened a track passing right through his farm. The railway authorities asked Mitchell to suggest a name for the small station they were building there. Mitchell looked at the local farmers who were bringing him fresh fruits every day. He did not choose a British name. He called the station *"KISSAN"* (the local word for farmer). The trains would stop, people would buy Mitchell’s fresh fruit preserves & they started calling it the stuff from Kissan station. A brand was born from a railway platform. When the line was drawn across Punjab in 1947, the Kissan empire was decapitated. The main farms & the original factory were now in Pakistan, but the brand’s biggest market was in India. To survive the chaos, the brand had to be surgically divided. An agreement was reached: the Pakistani company would keep the family name Mitchell’s & the Indian entity (based in Bengaluru) would keep the name Kissan. To this day, if you go to Pakistan, you will see the exact same jars & flavors, but with the name Mitchell’s. In India, we have Kissan. They are *Twin Brands separated at birth by a political tragedy*. After Partition, the Indian side of Kissan was struggling. It was a Ghost Brand looking for a new home. It was *acquired by Vittal Mallya (Vijay Mallya’s father) & the United Breweries (UB) Group in 1950*. For decades, the jam on our breakfast table was owned by the same man who owned the Kingfisher beer. It was *only in 1993 that the brand was sold to Hindustan Unilever*. In the 80s & 90s, jam was seen as a British habit something we ate with a knife & fork. Kissan realized they needed to Indianize the jam. They launched the Kissan Jammy Art campaigns, encouraging kids to draw on their bread. They were the 1st to move the product from the Posh Dining Table to the Tiffin Box. By making it colorful & fun, they turned a colonial preserve into an Indian childhood staple. Kissan is a Ghost because it is a brand named after the very people (the farmers) who are often ignored by big corporations. Mitchell named it out of respect for the men who worked his land in the Punjab sun. *It is a brand born out of Scotland to Punjab struggle & kept alive by the India-Pakistan split*. We call it a sweet treat, but Kissan is a survivor of the greatest migration in human history. *It is the only brand that is foreign in its origin, Indian in its heart & has a twin brother across the border*. So,Enjoy your toast with the delicious *Kissan Fruit Jam*