The Mustard Belt of Rajasthan

Rajasthan produces more than 45% of India's mustard. If you've ever had a Bengali macher jhol, a Punjabi sarson da saag, or a Bihari bhujia — odds are the oil came from a 200km stretch between Bharatpur and Alwar.

Why this soil, why this crop

Mustard is a rabi crop. It sips water once, flowers in December, and is harvested in February-March. Rajasthan's cold, dry winters are exactly what the plant wants. More sun = more oil content in the seed.

The old-timers here will tell you the best mustard seed has a subtle reddish tint. That's the high-oleic variety — pungent, sharp, slow to go rancid.

The mills that still use wood

There are maybe 400 operational wood kolhus left in the state. Most are single-family operations. No marketing budget, no Instagram, no GI tag. A kolhu is a vertical wooden screw inside a stone pit, turned by an ox or a slow-geared motor. It takes 40–45 minutes to press 8kg of seed. A modern expeller does the same in under 60 seconds.

We work with 12 of these mills. We know the families. We know the oxen's names.

What we pay

We pay the mills ₹180–210/L for wood-kolhu mustard oil. That's 2–3× the rate a big FMCG buyer offers. Why? Because that price lets the mill survive without cutting corners. If we squeeze the supply chain, the supply chain squeezes quality back. Everybody loses.

That's why a 1L bottle of Laxmi costs ₹289 and not ₹149. We're not hiding margin — there is no mystery margin to hide.