Why we started
I was born in Kashmir and lived there until I was ten. I still speak Kashmiri, badly in places and fluently in others, and I still call the same people when I need to know how the crop is doing.
When I started buying saffron in Delhi for my own kitchen, I found that almost nobody could tell me where it came from. The good stuff and the adulterated stuff were sold with the same words. What was missing was not romance; it was an address.
Zafran Co. is built on a supply chain we are related to. Ghulam Nabi Bhat farms the plot above Pampore that our family has bought from for two generations. Fayaz weaves in Nowhatta, ten minutes from where my mother grew up. That closeness is the only reason we can put names and numbers on a page and stand behind them.
How we work
We buy a grower's lot whole and pay at the harvest, not on sale. For pashmina and carpets we hold no inventory: pieces are made to order or commissioned, so the loom is paid for work someone has already asked for.
We don't invent awards, we don't buy reviews, and we don't dress Kashmir up as somewhere strange. It is a place with addresses, laboratories, licences and named people. That is what we sell against.
“We source through our own family in Kashmir. Not curated distance — a phone call.”