Independence Day: Karachi Bakery, India's small-business legend birthed by Partition

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Karachi Bakery. Founded in 1953, this bakery sits at the heart of Moazzam Jahi Market of Hyderabad. It sees thousands of customers at its doors every day who come to savour the delicacies brought by the businessman from Sindh, Khanchand Ramnani.

The story of Ramnani’s Karachi Bakery is as old as India’s independence. By leaving behind a small business back in Karachi, which is now in Pakistan, and migrating to Hyderabad with just a handful of recipes, the Sindhi businessman has surely left a legacy behind: a business born from Partition in 1947.Karachi to KarachiIt was the time when India and Pakistan were bearing the horrors of the great divide, when the people woke up to losing everything they had, but were afraid of losing what they called theirs. This was the time of Partition when Khanchand Ramnani along with his sons decided to move from Sindh in Pakistan to Hyderabad in India.

Khanchand had a food and bakery business in Sindh. All that he brought to India was the memory of the name of the city Karachi, where he grew up and, of course, a few recipes he had crafted. It was this memory that had Ramnani name his store in Hyderabad as ‘Karachi Bakery’, an ode to the city he had to leave behind.

Karachi Bakery, in its initial years, sold bakery and food items sourced from third parties, the wholesalers. It was only in the 1960s that the Sindhi businessman started to sell handcrafted fruit and Osmania biscuits which became an instant favourite of the people of Hyderabad. “Initially, my grandfather owned a bakery business during pre-Partition times.

They used to resell bakery products procured from wholesalers. Slowly they started making their own products. That's when all this began.