Ice Cream - From Bhopal To The World

After 1947, Bhopal commissioner marked the Roshanpura area (then called the Roshanpura Naka) of Bhopal as the outer boundary of the city. The city started to crawl out of the Polytechnic Square after Bhopal was declared the capital of Madhya Pradesh. 

 Bungalows, buildings were built in the area named Tatya Tope Nagar (T. T. Nagar). Vallabh Bhawan was built on Area Hills, followed by the Birla temple and its museum. An unorganized market slowly started taking shape across the Roshanpura Naka.

Fortunately the administration in the early days of Bhopal was prompt to name it the New Market, before it could be named as 0 number la the 10 number, 6 number, 7 number etc markets of Bhopal. By the 1970s a small ice cream parlour was also set up in this market. The Sindhi business man who had migrated from Bhusawal of Maharastra, used to procure Ice Creams from Agra and sell it at an ice cream parlour named Madhu IceCream. The growing city, lack of hang outs and even landmarks soon catapulted this small time ice cream joint to fame.

By 1988, this IceCream joint, renamed Top 'N Town, had set up its first creamery at Bhopal by the name of Ramani Ice Cream Company Pvt Ltd. (RICPL). The Top N Town has since emerged as one of the biggest brand names in central India, with manufacturing facilities located at Bhopal, Lucknow, Nagpur and Nasik.

The Hot Spot is an Ice Cream chain in the making in neighbouring Pakistan. An  idea of two brothers Omar and Ali Khan, they started in 1995 on a small scale selling homemade ice cream to close friends and relatives. Soon, the demand went soaring and they had to establish their first commercial outlet that they later moved to F-7 Markaz. The Unique Selling Point of this Ice Cream joint is their home made Ice Creams, which has helped them extend their parlors to Islamabad, Lahore & Karachi.

Wondering what could be the connection between the Hot Spot of Pakistan and Bhopal? Omar and Ali Khan are grand sons of Abida Sultan, about whom her son Shaharyar M. Khan had written in the epilogue of “Memoirs of a Rebel Princess”:

“The doubts that gnawed at her conscience throughout her life in Pakistan related to her taking this momentous decision on my behalf while I was still young and impressionable. She felt that she might have forced my hand in denying me a life of comfort and financial security in Bhopal”