Raghunandan Kamath of Natural Ice Cream: The Making of the Indian Ice Cream Baron

Kamath was the youngest of eight children in his family, and spent his early life in acute poverty in the village of Mulki in the south Indian state of Karnataka. The appalling story of Kamath’s poverty was evident from the fact that if two of the four brothers chose to wear clothes, the other two had to remain bare bodied. Kamath’s father, Srinivas Kamath, was a fruit vendor who struggled to make ends meet.

The family’s meal revolved around three things – coffee, jaggery and ripe jackfruit (available freely on the trees in the village), which his mother used to prepare in rounds. Being the youngest, Kamath was a happy-go-lucky kid who spent most of his childhood in a playful manner. He enjoyed swimming and climbing trees. He especially liked watching airplanes, then for him was a dream that was near-impossible to come true...