Maatru Rasah is a heritage Indian food brand started in 2013 by Dr (CS) Puja Shree Agarwal, built on her mother Uma Agarwal's recipes from the Agarwal family kitchen in Katra, Prayagraj — a lineage that goes back to 1857. Everything is made by hand, in small batches, without artificial preservatives.
"Maatru Rasah is my mother's food. I am the daughter who decided it should travel."
That one line is the whole story, but it deserves the longer telling.
I grew up in a house where the kitchen was the centre of everything. While a lot of what the world ate came out of packets, ours came out of my mother's hands — pickles of every kind, sweets made the slow way, food that tasted of a place and a person. My mother, Uma Agarwal, is the kind of cook who seasons by instinct and tastes everything before it leaves the kitchen. Her recipes are not hers alone; they have been carried in our family kitchen in Katra, Prayagraj, for generations — a lineage that reaches back to 1857.
A recipe lineage, and an honest line about dates
Let me be precise, because heritage is easy to exaggerate and we don't. 1857 is the recipe lineage — the family kitchen our recipes come from. Maatru Rasah the brand was incorporated in 2013. We never say "since 1857" as if the company is that old; what is old is the cooking, not the LLP. That honesty matters to us, and it should matter to you when you read any heritage food label.
The choice that defines us: no shortcuts
The thing I remember most about my mother's food is what was not in it. No artificial preservatives. No artificial colours. Just ingredients, salt, oil, spices, sun and time — and pickles that still kept for a long while, because that is what good technique does. (If you want the food science of how achaar keeps without preservatives, we wrote a whole piece on it — read how achaar keeps without artificial preservatives.)
We carried that one rule into the brand and never bent it: we make food the way she made it, or we don't make it.
A daughter's promise
The brand began with a question. It was my mother's birthday, and I asked her something I'd never asked: what is the one thing you still wish for? She said, quietly, that she wished her food — her real recipes, made honestly — could reach homes beyond ours.
That wish became my work. In 2013 we started Maatru Rasah; in December 2024 I left my full-time academic post to give it everything. Somewhere in those years the work also earned a name: I call myself a heripreneur — someone who runs a business in service of an inherited heritage. My mother still seasons every batch. Her small team of women prepares the ingredients, fills the jars and packs the boxes. We make only three hundred to five hundred jars a month, across everything — a cap we keep on purpose, because beyond it the food would have to change, and it won't.
What "Maatru Rasah" means
Maatru is mother. Rasah is taste, essence. The name is a small bow to the women and elders whose hands and patience go into every product. We also cook with the same single-origin ingredients we trust for our own family — GI-tagged spices like Lakadong turmeric and Ing Makhir ginger from Meghalaya, and wild forest honey — sourced with care and named openly on our pages.
We are not the cheapest food you can buy, and we don't try to be. We are honest about how the food is made, and we are expensive for exactly that reason.
Thank you for reading this far
If any of this sounds like your own kitchen, or your grandmother's, then you already understand what we are trying to keep alive. You can read the fuller family story on our About Us page, and see what we make in the shop. Every jar is a small piece of my mother's kitchen, sent to yours.
— Dr (CS) Puja Shree Agarwal, Founder