Why Kannauj, India’s perfume capital, smells nothing like you’d expect

Kannauj, India’s perfume capital, is experiencing a harsh reality. While the city promises a heady fragrance, the current season offers a stark contrast. The lack of fresh scents is due to the monsoons, which make water content in flowers too high for oil extraction. The best distillation time is around Holi, from March to June. Divy Gupta, co-founder of Raahi Parfums, explains that the cold months allow for a different kind of distillation – attars with heavy, warm and musky accords like Shamama, Oudh and Henna.

The centuries-old hydro distillation technique, deg-bhapka, ensures no steam escapes, preserving the distillery's efficiency. Despite modern tools like e-commerce and digital marketing, Kannauj’s distilleries still rely on this traditional method. Pranjal Kapoor, a distiller at Churn ML Ramnarain Perfumers, oversees the cleaning and chopping of raw materials. Even though it's lean season, he distils other ingredients, using raw materials such as sea shells, which give off a fishy scent.

The Guptas of Raahi Parfums and the Tandon siblings of Boond Fragrances have tapped into the emotional power of fragrance, launching direct-to-customer (D2C) businesses. For Esha of Kastoor, her Instagram post of roses being harvested went viral, leading to a flood of inquiries. Raahi Parfums now supplies fragrance ingredients to global big four of perfumery, including Givaudan, dsm-firmenich, IFF, and Symrise AG.