Mysore Sandal Soap is a brand of soap manufactured by the Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Limited (KSDL), a company owned by the government of Karnataka in India. This soap has been manufactured since 1916, when Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV, the king of Mysore, set up the Government Soap Factory in Bangalore. The main motivation for setting up the factory was the excessive sandalwood reserves that the Mysore Kingdom had, which could not be exported to Europe because of the First World War. In 1980, KSDL was incorporated as a company by merging the Government Soap Factory with the sandalwood oil factories at Shimoga and Mysore. Mysore Sandal Soap is the only soap in the world made from 100% pure sandalwood oil. KSDL owns a proprietary geographical indication tag on the soap, which gives it intellectual property rights to use the brand name, to ensure quality, and to prevent piracy and unauthorised use by other manufacturers. In 2006, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the Indian cricketer was selected as the first brand ambassador of the Mysore Sandal Soap.
Recalls an old-time employee, MB Rao, “The company, after the glorious days of the Wadiyars, was on subsistence functioning till it got a Geographical Indicator or GI tag in 2006. From then on, the products, especially Mysore Sandalwood Soap, got a boost and revenues have been going up steadily.”
The makers of Mysore Sandal Soap launched on 4 November 2017, a new basket of soaps with brand name Mysoap in variants of Rose Milk Cream, Jasmine Milk Cream, Orange Lime, Cologne Lavender, and Fruity Floral. Each variety is exclusively packaged depicting ethnic Indian woman in traditional looks. The soap weighs 100 g.
Picture Credit : Google