S H Kelkar & Company is India’s largest homegrown fragrance and flavour house, a business built over a century on the simple idea that every soap, detergent, snack and perfume needs a distinctive scent or taste - and someone has to create it. Founded in 1922 by Mr. Dadasaheb Kelkar as a small attar and perfume shop in Mumbai, the company has grown into a global B2B partner for consumer-goods manufacturers, supplying the invisible ingredients that define household brands. Its recurring approach is to win with science and relationships: it invents proprietary molecules in its own labs, embeds them deep inside customer products through long development cycles, and then stays locked in for years because switching a scent is costly and risky for any brand.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a century-old fragrance cash cow that spans continents, a fast-growing flavours challenger, and a small ingredients unit being rebuilt for self-reliance - each feeding the same creation-and-manufacturing backbone.
1. Fragrances: where the group’s cash and reputation come from
This segment makes the scent compounds that go into other companies’ soaps, detergents, deodorants and fine perfumes, earning roughly 90% of group revenue by serving everyone from global giants to local Indian traders.
- Sells to manufacturers, not consumers - its customers are FMCG companies and hundreds of small traders who buy fragrance compounds as a raw material for products like toilet soap, fabric softener, shampoo, air freshener and eau de parfum. The company operates a B2B model where it competes for briefs from multinationals, works to technical specifications for domestic players, and makes proactive product pitches to smaller, disruptive brands.
- One in five Indian fragrances is theirs - the company holds roughly 20% of the domestic fragrance market, while the top four or five global MNC competitors together command about 60%. It is the only Indian-origin player at scale in a field dominated by names like Givaudan and IFF, and it competes with a leaner team of around 20 perfumers globally versus the 120-130 its larger rivals deploy.
- A European bridge to fine fragrance - its Italian subsidiary CFF, acquired in stages and now fully owned, sits close to Milan and supplies Italian brands in fine fragrance, personal care and home care. The plant there can make 5,000 tonnes a year with nearly 95% automated dosing robots, and it gives the group a direct line into European and Middle Eastern markets.
- Patented molecules lock in customers - the company has developed 12 captive molecules and filed 23 patent applications over five years, with 13 already commercialised. These are not sold as standalone products but are woven into the fragrance designs it creates for clients, making those formulations hard for competitors to replicate. One such patented-molecule win came from a large global MNC in the home-care segment in India.
- Actively pruning low-return business - it has consciously exited about Rs. 50 crore of annual revenue that was structurally low-margin or negative-margin, choosing profitability over volume. It also carries a contract manufacturing stream of Rs. 74.3 crore for a single large customer, a legacy arrangement outside its core business.
2. Flavours: the younger sibling growing at 30%
This segment makes the taste compounds for beverages, dairy, bakery and pharmaceutical products, and while it is only a twentieth of group revenue today, it is scaling fast by riding the same creation-and-application engine as fragrances.
- From shakes to syrups - its flavour compounds end up in fruit-based drinks, milkshakes, smoothies, confectionery, baked goods and even medicines, with the portfolio spanning natural, nature-identical and artificial forms in liquid, dry and encapsulated formats. The FY 2021-22 acquisition of NuTaste added premium-grade syrups, sauces and seasonings, opening doors to QSR chains and fast-growing FMCG brands.
- Built on a dedicated food-innovation hub - a Food Innovation Centre in Mumbai houses a skilled application team of flavourists who work directly with food and beverage manufacturers. The business also sells natural flavours directly to consumers through Amazon, Flipkart and its own e-commerce portal, kevaflavours.com, an unusual direct-to-consumer experiment for a B2B house.
- More international than it looks - while 56% of flavour revenue comes from India, the remaining 44% is exported to the rest of the world, giving it a geographic balance that the fragrance business took decades to build.
3. Global Ingredients: the backward-integration bet being rebuilt
This small segment makes the aroma chemicals that go into fragrance compounds, and its entire strategy is about shifting production from China to India so the group controls its own critical raw-material supply.
- China exit, India rebuild - the company has closed its Chinese plant and is executing a complete backward-integration project in India, aiming to be 100% self-sufficient in these ingredients with full domestic capacity. Overall dependence on China for raw materials has already dropped by roughly 30% compared to three years ago.
- Farmer partnerships as a supply chain - through a promoter-owned entity, Keva Aromatics, the company runs a farmer development programme to cultivate aromatic plants like geranium and vetiver in India, with a buy-back guarantee for the essential oils. This reduces reliance on imported naturals and builds a local sourcing base that competitors cannot easily replicate.
- A niche asset with more than 30% gross margins - in a normal production environment, the ingredients business can deliver gross margins around 40%, though at its current scale it contributes only Rs. 2-3 crore in EBITDA. The Mahad musk-ingredient facility in Maharashtra reached full capacity within a year of starting up, a pace the company describes as exceptional for bulk chemical manufacturing.
R&D and creation capabilities
A network of 11 creation centres and a government-recognised R&D lab form the invisible engine behind every segment - this is where molecules are invented, patents are filed, and customer briefs become finished scents and tastes.
- The only Indian fragrance house that patents molecules - the company is the sole company of Indian origin to file patents in fragrance and novel aroma molecules, with its Mulund R&D centre recognised by the Department of Science and Industrial Research. Its Discovery Team works on platform projects like pro-fragrance and functional fragrance molecules, while a separate Malodor Counteraction Platform has already produced four priority patent applications.
- A library of 35,000 formulations - the company maintains a catalogue of over 35,000 existing formulations and a raw-material library of more than 1,500 ingredients, giving perfumers and flavourists a vast starting palette for new briefs. Its Scientific Research Centre, set up in 1995 with V.G. Vaze College, employs over 100 scientists and chemists working across biotechnology, microbiology and custom synthesis.
- Talent pipeline from a dedicated college course - the company draws trainees from a Postgraduate Diploma in Perfumery and Cosmetic Management at VG Vaze College, which produces about 24 students a year, with the company hiring seven or eight of them annually. This creates a steady flow of homegrown perfumers in an industry where talent is scarce and MNC competitors hoard it.
- AI and biotech are the next frontier - the company is actively using artificial intelligence to speed up flavour innovation and is progressing research in bio-technology to find natural substitutes for chemical synthesis, including genetic engineering, tissue culture and biotransformations.
Group structure and partners
A web of 16 subsidiaries and one associate stretches from Mumbai to Milan, Amsterdam, Singapore, Jakarta, Dubai and Delaware - each node placed either to manufacture closer to customers, to access creative talent, or to hold intellectual property.
- Europe is the second headquarters - the European operations run through two main entities: CFF Keva Italy in Milan (a leading fragrance supplier to Italian brands) and Holland Aromatics in the Netherlands (a niche manufacturer with a new greenfield plant now fully operational). A German subsidiary, Keva Germany GmbH, was incorporated in 2024 to set up a creative development centre servicing European and Middle Eastern business.
- Asia-Pacific built for speed - a factory in Indonesia, operational since March 2024, serves the ASEAN region with duty-free benefits, while a Singapore subsidiary acts as both a sourcing hub and a fabric-care centre of excellence. The China subsidiary, Anhui Ruibang Aroma, has been exited and its plant closed as part of the shift to Indian ingredient production.
- A recent US and Middle East push - Keva USA Inc. was incorporated in Delaware in 2024 to evaluate the American market and connect with large global MNCs in the world’s biggest fragrance and flavour market. Keva Middle East FZE was set up in Sharjah, UAE, in September 2025 as a strategic extension to serve regional clientele and accelerate R&D capabilities.
- NuTaste is now an associate, not a subsidiary - the company sold a 40% stake in NuTaste Food and Drink Labs in June 2024, retaining a 40% interest as an associate rather than a consolidated subsidiary, while keeping access to its premium-grade syrups, sauces and seasonings portfolio.