How Indian brand P-Tal aims to bring traditional cookware to global kitchens

As author Stephen King once noted, “Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”

One brand that epitomises this phrase is Indian cookware brand P-Tal.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Amritsar, Punjab, P-Tal was initially launched as a college project by co-founders Aditya Agrawal, Kirti Goel and Gaurav Garg to revive a neglected form of cookware craftsmanship. 

Since its inception, P-Tal has generated more than US$6 million in revenue, impacted the lives of over 55 artisan families and made a successful debut on Shark Tank India. 

Inside Retail: How did the concept for P-Tal come about?

Aditya Agrawal: P-Tal started as a college project at Shri Ram College of Commerce, aimed to revive India’s only United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-listed craft form from Jandiala Guru in Punjab, which was on the brink of extinction. 

The initiative was not only about reviving this tradition but also about providing artisans with sustainable livelihoods and creating a meaningful impact in their lives.

By reimagining traditional brass, copper and kansa [a type of bronze] cookware for modern households, P-Tal was started to bring back the Ayurvedic wisdom of cooking in brass, drinking from copper, and eating in kansa. The vision is to reintroduce these practices not only to Indian homes but also to households worldwide. 

We aim to make P-Tal a globally recognised brand for brass, copper, and kansa utensils.

IR: In the year ahead, what areas of opportunity are you planning to tap into?

AA: In the year ahead we want to focus on taking P-Tal to the global audience, specifically in the US. 

We want to create a brand that is not limited to India but to build a global brand that can take the age-old traditions of Thatheras [brass and copper artisans in India] to the world. We see huge potential when someone from outside India comes and shares how wonderful their experience was with our products. 

We visited the US last year to understand more about the market, and the love we received from our customers has made us realise that we are not just building a cookware brand but a brand that connects people to their roots. So this year we we as a team want to work more focused and effectively to make P-Tal a household brand globally.

IR: One of P-Tal’s points of differentiation is the brand’s focus on reviving the Thathera craft, the only art form from India to be listed under UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Why was this an important focus behind building the brand?

AA: Our artisans are our heroes. P-Tal exists because of them. 

They are the creators of these beautifully crafted products that take us back in time and ground us in the present. 

The craft of the Thatheras of Jandiala Guru represents the traditional technique of manufacturing brass and copper utensils in Punjab. A proud community of individuals, spend their days hammering copper and brass sheets into vessels. They were unaware of the potential their craft holds. 

The community which was once characterised by happy faces, cheerful identities, and beautiful craft was reduced to a group of old men suffering from hearing, heart, and lung problems trying to feed their families. Yet, the community is spread across the country and is still carrying on the beautiful craft of handmade utensils.

Our artisans are the foundation of P-Tal. We always wanted to see them as rock stars.

Their belief and trust in our vision have helped us grow as a brand. Without them, we would lose the beauty and essence we are so focused on reviving. They made us, just as we encouraged them to revive their heritage.

IR: How does P-Tal fill a white space in the retail industry? 

AA: Our grandparents used to cook with brass, drink from copper vessels, and eat from kansa.

Over time, we switched to chemical-coated cookware for convenience. P-Tal wants to change that. 

We’re building a brand that offers everything you need for brass, copper, and kansa products, including how to use and clean them.

These traditional utensils are available in the market, but finding pure metals is tough. At P-Tal, we prioritise purity. We’re creating a brand so that when anyone thinks of brass, copper, or bronze, they think of us. 

P-Tal fills a gap in the retail industry by bringing back traditional metals into daily life, ensuring high-quality, pure products, highlighting the health benefits of using these metals and connecting people to their cultural roots

IR: What have been the biggest challenges that you have come across while building the brand so far? How have you overcome these challenges?

AA: One of the biggest challenges we used to face initially was to balance the supply and demand for our products. 

Since we used to work with the artisans, it was initially difficult to win their trust to make products for us so that we could pitch those to the consumers. Simultaneously, when we used to convince them to make such products, it was difficult to find consumers who could buy them.

We figured that the best way to counter this was by approaching as many people as we could both on the demand and supply side to make sure we could make both ends meet. 

One of the other challenges in the modern day has been to educate consumers and create awareness about the right way to use these products to avail the maximum benefits. We are tackling the same by modernisng our products and making them more functional with heat-resistant metallic handles, glass lids, etc to make it easier and convenient for consumers to use them in modern homes and kitchens. 

IR: Since launching in 2019, what has the brand’s growth trajectory been like? 

AA: Since the time P-Tal was launched, it has grown manifold year-over-year (YoY). 

The average monthly income of artisans has increased by a whopping 2350 per cent and the number of artisan families impacted has also grown 20 times over. We have generated more than US$6 million in revenue so far. The brand has grown more than 100 per cent YoY with the current year’s growth over 350 per cent compared to the previous year.

IR: What are your long-term goals for the brand?

AA: Our aim at P-Tal is to build a global brand from India that stands for reviving age-old traditional metals by modernising them in homes and kitchens across the world. 

The goal is to stay consistent with the core of our brand and spread the rich heritage and culture of India across the world, while positively impacting the craftsmen and the legacy of their craftsmanship. We want people across the globe to embrace the beauty and benefits of our traditional metals which have a rich history and heritage associated with them.

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