When in Pune, you must have stumbled upon ‘Ardeshir’s’, one of the city’s most popular fizzy drinks.
Turns out the story behind how the brand started is as iconic as its founder, Ardeshir Khodadad Irani.
His entrepreneurial imagination gave Pune its very own soda water manufacturing unit in 1884.
Before this, Pune relied on mules ferrying soda from Mumbai.
Ardeshir, who had fled from Yazd in Iran to Quetta (now in Pakistan) to Pune with just Rs 8, chanced upon one of the brawls in a Pune bar caused by a delayed soda delivery.
So, he found a way to produce carbonated water. His great-grandson, Marzban Irani (54), shares, “He would light a charcoal bhatti (furnace), generate the carbon dioxide, dissolve it in water, and that’s how he made the soda water.”
With that, Ardeshir’s was born, a bottled range of fizzy cheer that even predates Coca-Cola, which, by most estimates, was invented in 1886 — two years after Ardeshir’s started in 1884.
While Ardeshir had invented quite a few classics, Marzban’s father added orangeade, lemonade, raspberry, and ice cream soda and teekha (spicy) ginger to the list when he took over.
A browse through the current menu at Ardeshir’s reveals a caffeine-free cola, peach, pineapple, green apple, jeera masala (a drink featuring cumin powder), masala kala khatta (java plum juice), and tonic water.
Their orders and loyal customer base are proof that neither time nor the emergence of other drink alternatives has weathered Ardeshir’s popularity.