A couple, a converted servant quarter and a launch before Eid.

Shan began in Karachi in 1981. Its founder, Sikandar Sultan, started it with his wife, and the business magazine Profit by Pakistan Today reported in March 2021 that the couple first made masala mixes in an empty servant quarter they had converted into a home office. “In the beginning, we started off as a one-room operation where my wife and I spent countless hours perfecting our recipes,” Sultan told the magazine, adding that the response was strong from the start, perhaps because the mixes went on sale just before Eid, when many households buy masalas. His wife, who asked through him not to be named, is in his words “the custodian of the recipes.”

Profit traced the idea back to Sultan’s youth. In households of that period, it said, common spice combinations were kept as solid masala patties from which a cook broke off a piece; when his mother was away in Lahore and the family ran out, his sisters could not reproduce her recipes, his father asked Sikandar to try, and he succeeded. His family had been in other trades — the magazine said his grandfather made carriages and his father dealt in carpets — and Sultan himself, a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, first worked as a photographer and filmmaker. He told Profit that his family had migrated from Delhi and his wife’s from Bombay, and the magazine linked the brand’s strength in Sindh to the tastes of families who settled in Karachi after Partition.

The company’s own account runs along the same lines. Shan Foods says its recipe mixes were at first shared only within the wider family, that orders soon came from friends, acquaintances and then the general public, and that Sultan then “decided to launch his very own brand, ‘SHAN’.” The business largely paid for its own growth: Sultan told Profit that he “sold everything I had except for my shoes,” the magazine said that much of the early capital came from a family property business, and Sultan said the company had never taken out a loan.

A rival to National, and a diaspora staple.

Shan entered a market that already had a leader. Profit wrote in March 2024 that National Foods, set up as a spice company in 1970, pioneered packaged spice mixes in Pakistan and met its first real competition when Shan arrived in 1981. Aurora, the Dawn group’s marketing magazine, called the two companies the country’s “spice masters” in 2015, saying their boxed recipe mixes had changed how Pakistanis at home and abroad cook. The rivalry has continued since: Profit described a corporately run, publicly listed National against a family-run Shan, and reported in 2021 that Shan remained the leader in masala mixes while National, with its wider range of condiments, had the larger total revenue.

The range is built around recipe mixes, each blended for a particular dish. Sultan told Profit in 2021 that Shan made about 88 of them, and named Bombay Biryani, Karahi, Achar Gosht and Korma as its best sellers worldwide. English Wikipedia lists plain spices, cooking pastes, dessert mixes, condiments and Shoop instant noodles alongside them. In March 2024 the company added ready-to-use cooking sauces positioned under the line “Pour, Cook, Serve,” which its co-chairwoman, Sammer Sultan, told Profit were aimed at “a niche market segment that values convenience without compromising on authentic taste.”

Shan travelled with the Pakistani diaspora. English Wikipedia says its mixes were sold to Pakistanis who had moved to the Arab world, Europe, the United States and Canada, and Sultan told Profit that North America was the company’s largest international market. In December 2014 The Economic Times of India reported that Shan mixes for dishes including shahi haleem, Bombay biryani, chappli kebab, Lahori fish and nihari had found their way into Indian kitchens. A moment of celebrity followed in December 2020, when the model Gigi Hadid posted a picture of her spice cabinet with Shan boxes on Instagram; The Juggernaut reported that #GigiGotShan trended within hours.

Packaged spice in Pakistan and its diaspora.

The seven brands in this group are all food and drink names from Pakistan and Sri Lanka: Shan, National Foods, Rooh Afza, Olper’s, Tapal, Elephant House and Munchee. Pakistani and Sri Lankan food and drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal, snack or drink it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Still private, still a family company.

Shan Foods is privately held. Profit reported in 2021 that Sultan and his family owned 82% of its shares, that he had moved into a semi-retired role, and that day-to-day management had passed to a professional, non-family team led by the chief executive Sikandar Tiwana. Tiwana had told the magazine in 2018 that the company was considering a stock-market listing, but in 2021 Sultan said there was no plan for one: “We don’t want to lose our control.” The brand’s mark on Karachi is literal, Profit noted: the roundabout on Korangi Road near its office is known as Shan Chorangi.

On where the mixes are made, Profit reported in 2021 that Shan had manufacturing facilities in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and that its production abroad still relied largely on ingredients exported from Pakistan. The company says it grinds spices cryogenically, using liquid nitrogen, and packs them with food-grade nitrogen in aluminium foil, a process it calls “V-Lock” freshness; it says the brand is present in more than 70 countries across five continents, while Sultan gave Profit a figure of more than 75. In July 2023 The Express Tribune reported that 12 Shan products had been withdrawn in Germany over the alleged presence of the fumigant ethylene oxide; a German importer said only specific batches were recalled, and Shan called the claims “incorrect and misleading.”

For a design guide, Shan shows how a brand built on a family’s recipes can travel as far as the families who cook with it. Compare National Foods, its older Karachi rival, and MDH, the masala house that began as a spice shop in Sialkot. For this guide we use chilli red, turmeric and clove brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Shan’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.