In the 1970s, a 20-year-old boy stood in the middle of Bombay’s bustling wholesale markets. Around him, shopkeepers scooped coconut oil out of large metal tins and poured it into customers’ steel containers. There were no labels, no sealed packs and no recognisable brands, only a commodity changing hands in the same way it had for generations. Most people would have walked past the scene without a second thought. Harsh Mariwala did not. If consumers trusted packaged food, soap and medicines, why should something as widely used as coconut oil remain an unbranded product sold from bulk containers? That moment of curiosity would eventually lead Harsh Mariwala to build Marico India into one of the most successful consumer goods companies. Long before it became a Rs 13,611-crore business with operations across 25 countries and a market capitalisation exceeding Rs 1 lakh crore, it began with a visionary’s big bet with a blue bottle.