When radio was the omnipresent background sound on streets, inside public transport and at shops, the Mugli Ghutti 555 jingle would play on loop. ‘ Honge bachche swasth , phale phulega bachpan. Inhe pilae Mugli Ghutti 555…healthy kids will have a healthy childhood, feed them Mugli Ghutti 555.’ As a result, almost seven generations of Indians grew up with this line embedded in their minds. Mugli Ghutti 555 is an Ayurvedic tonic for children, designed to help them combat bouts of indigestion. But the viral jingle made the product as popular as a kids’ candy. It was such a catchy jingle and so effective that within a few years of its launch, there was hardly any house in north India that did not keep Mugli Ghutti 555 in the medicine rack for children.
Most successful advertising campaigns have a trigger button that connects the audience to the product. There is typically a tagline that everyone repeats. In Mugli Ghutti’s case, it was “ahaa mitthi mitthi”, delivered in a child’s voice, which kids would mimic ad nauseam.“I was barely four years old when my father took me to the recording studio where the Mugli Ghutti jingle was being recorded. My father auditioned almost two dozen kids but he did not like any of the voice samples. Just when he was about to step out of the studio, I repeated the punch line aloud. My father immediately asked the studio to record it in my voice. And the rest, as they say, is history. It has been almost 45 years, but the punchline ‘ahaa mitthi mitthi ’ remains unchanged. It’s still in my voice,” says Deepti Kathpalia, daughter of late Gopal Krishan Arora, one of the owners of Shri Ram Ayurved Bhavan, the company that produces the Mugli Ghutti product.
Homegrown success
The story of Mugli Ghutti 555 began in 1918 when a self-taught practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine, Lala Shri Ram Arora, would experiment with various herbs and condiments to make traditional medicines. His homemade ghaav nashak, an ointment for injuries, was well-known for quick healing properties. So, people from his neighbourhood in Paharganj would rush to his home clinic in the event of any sports-related injury. Arora’s home-made dant manjan or tooth powder was known to heal bleeding gums and strengthen weak teeth. But more than any other medicine, it was his mugli gutti—a watery syrup made from extract of cumin seeds, turmeric, carom seeds, rose extract and many other ingredients that were found to be effective for gripe, flatulence and indigestion in young kids.
“My great grandfather, Lala Shri Ram Arora, had a god given gift for healing and he used it for people’s welfare. There was no commercial aspect to his endeavour. It was a purely charitable enterprise. That is why when his son Vaid Radha Krishan Arora formalised the enterprise, he named it Shri Ram Ayurved Bhavan to celebrate the spirit of community welfare,” Kathpalia.
Cottage industry to big brand
During the first five decades of its existence, when Shri Ram Arora, his son Radha Krishna Arora, and his two grandsons Gopal Krishan Arora and Sudhir Arora ran the enterprise, Shri Ram Ayurved Bhavan was a family-owned business. The joint family and its various branches lived on the ground floor and the factory operated on the first floor and terrace. “ When we lived in Paharganj – it was a real old Delhi family system. I remember as a child how raw materials used to be delivered in the driveway in old style three-wheeler tempos. The broilers used to work through the day .” says Kathpalia, musing about the times when the brand was run like a small cottage industry. She says she clearly remembers the aroma of all 18 to 20 herbs that were put out to dry on her large terrace.
So intimate was the business that during summer holidays, the children were allowed to sit in the large storage room and fold cardboard sheets into packaging boxes. Such activities allowed the next generation to immerse themselves into the business. “The founders had a very clear idea of how they wanted to run this enterprise. There was no outside funding, no loans, no out-sourcing of work, no excessive spending on large infrastructure. Everything was done under the supervision of directors, who were all from within the family,” Kathpalia adds.
Whatever profit the business brought in, it was channelised back into the business. That is how it remained debt free, slowly growing big in scale.
In the early 1970’s, when brothers Gopal Krishan and Sudhir Arora started steering the business, they realised that once there was adequate liquidity within the firm and the brand had become well-known across north India – it was ideal time to scale up the business. The first target in the mission was to rack up the demand. And that needed more aggressive marketing and advertising. “Even though my father and my uncle had no formal orientation in business management or communication – they knew very well who their customers were and what kind of marketing was needed,” says Kathpalia.
Apart from one signature radio jingle, Gopal Krishan and Sudhir Arora used simple but effective tools to reach out to their target clientele—the middle and lower middle-class people.
The founders got satirist and humourist Kaka Hathrasi to do a light-hearted chat show called Mitthi Mitthi Hasaaiyaan, which ran on All India Radio on a weekly basis. They would set up eye-catching stalls at local fairs in cities and small towns to attract families with young children. Innovative toys were designed and produced for distribution at the stalls- like Snake and Ladder boards, Ludo, playing cards and mugs with company insignia. These were widely distributed among mela visitors. All these interventions led to spike in sales and the brand becoming even bigger. By end of the 1980s, Mugli Ghutti 555 and many other products of Shri Ram Ayurved Bhavan were competing neck and neck with more established ayurvedic brands such as Baidyanath and Dabur.
The company’s current directors are Sudhir Arora and Vikas Arora.
“The founders Gopal Krishan and Sudhir Arora turned a disadvantage into their strength. There is an inherent suspicion that Indians have for large corporatised medicinal system and a traditional faith in small intimate Vaidya-led family produced ayurvedic formulations. Unlinning this factor became the key reason behind Mugli Ghutti’s success,” says Kathpalia.
This article is part of a series called BusinessHistories exploring iconic businesses in India that have endured tough times and changing markets. Read all articles here.