After more than 13 years building brands across telecom, media, sports, and consumer technology, Shoury Gupta stepped away from the corporate track to build Patang, a brand rooted in India’s regional snack traditions. What began as a quiet realization in supermarket aisles and quick commerce apps became a clear mission: bring India’s lesser-known culinary heritage back into the spotlight, one carefully crafted snack at a time.
From corporate brands to his own
For Shoury Gupta, the decision to start Patang was not a sudden leap. It came from repeatedly noticing the same pattern while shopping: shelves packed with western snacks and endless “innovations,” while authentic Indian foods were disappearing from view. Growing up around families from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, he was already familiar with namkeen that carried memory, place, and identity. After years of building other people’s brands, he realized the brand he most wanted to create was one that answered a deeper question: what happened to real Indian food?
That question became Patang.
Why regional snacks?
Patang is built on a simple but powerful idea: India does not have one snack culture, it has hundreds. Each region carries its own makers, recipes, and inherited traditions from Ratlam’s sev to Darbhanga’s makhana and Jamnagar’s chiwda. In organized retail, these snacks were either missing or reduced to generic mixtures with no story or pride. Shoury Gupta saw that as both a cultural loss and a business opportunity. Patang exists to find, honour, and carry these regional foods to a wider audience, without stripping away their identity.
The meaning of Patang
The name Patang was chosen for its simplicity, nostalgia, and cultural resonance. A kite is familiar to every Indian childhood, but for the brand, it also represents travel. With Patang, each pack becomes a small flight across India from Ratlam to Jamnagar to Darbhanga and beyond. The brand wants the experience to feel joyful and airborne, while the thread that holds it together remains strong: careful sourcing, traditional recipes, and respect for the original makers. That balance reflects the identity Shoury Gupta wanted to build.
Authenticity without compromise
One of the hardest parts of building Patang has been preserving authenticity while creating a scalable consumer brand. The company deliberately avoided the easy route of making everything in one factory and simply labeling it as regional. Instead, Patang works with multiple manufacturing kitchens that belong to the traditions they represent. That makes the supply chain more complex, but it keeps the soul of the product intact. The challenge is translation, not compromise. Recipes stay untouched, while the surrounding systems hygiene, food safety, packaging, and shelf stability are modernized for today’s retail environment.
Branding with meaning
Shoury Gupta’s background in brand strategy shaped how Patang is positioned in a crowded snack market. Rather than compete on noise, discounts, or gimmicks, the brand leans into meaning, provenance, and restraint. Every product is tied to a real place, and that place becomes the hero of the story. The packaging is quiet and editorial, designed to signal confidence and quality without shouting.In a market full of loud labels, Patang chose to speak softly and let substance do the work.
Built with discipline
Patang began as a bootstrapped venture alongside an angel co-founder who believed in the idea early. That structure shaped the company’s culture from the start. The biggest share of capital went into distribution — getting on shelves, staying in stock, managing logistics, and funding the working capital needed for modern retail and quick commerce. Branding and packaging also received meaningful investment, but as craft decisions rather than recurring burn. The guiding principle was clear: a brand that cannot be found does not exist.
Growth through proof, not hype
Patang’s early milestones were practical, not flashy. Customers reordered without discounts. The brand held premium pricing in quick commerce. Corporate gifting clients chose it over legacy names. Institutional and travel-sector conversations started opening up. Those proof points gave confidence that the brand could stand on its own. Shoury Gupta has said the company remains open to the right partners, but only if there is alignment with the mission. For Patang, capital matters — but mission matters more.
Traditional recipes, modern consumers
Patang draws a firm line between the recipe and everything around it. The recipe is sacred. A Ratlami sev or methi para exists because generations refined it, and the brand refuses to “optimize” its heart for a focus group. At the same time, it adapts everything around the recipe for modern use: portion sizes, transparent labeling, premium packaging, and discovery-friendly formats. That approach preserves emotional value while making the products easier to access and gift.
Beyond snacks
Patang was never meant to be only a namkeen brand. Shoury Gupta sees it as a regional Indian food house, with namkeen as the first chapter. The brand has already expanded into Bihar-rooted makhana, and pickles are in development. Over the next five years, the roadmap includes stronger quick commerce and modern trade presence, growing gifting into a year-round business, building institutional and travel-retail partnerships, and moving internationally with markets that have large Indian diasporas.
The ambition is straightforward: when people think of premium regional Indian food, they should think of Patang.
The legacy he wants
Shoury Gupta’s hope is that Patang helps turn “regional” from a limitation into a badge of pride. He wants future generations whether in Bengaluru or Boston to know where these snacks come from and to value the families who made them famous. His message to founders is equally direct: not every great company begins with invention. Sometimes the biggest opportunity is already there, waiting for someone to tell its story well. Patang is his answer to that idea, a brand built to carry India’s snack heritage forward with patience, pride, and purpose.
Interview By : Sejal Thakur
