RCKC – Gali Paranthe Wali

RCKC is not a food business, despite trading from Gali Paranthewali (Paratha Lane) in Chandni Chowk, the Old Delhi street famous for paratha shops. Company records place its founding around the early 1900s, when Ram Chandra moved his family from Badaun to Delhi to trade sarees and shawls; his son Krishan Chandra later built the business further, and the initials RCKC stand for Ram Chandra Krishan Chandra. According to the company's own account, it was Krishan Chandra who petitioned the British colonial government to rename the street — then called Dariba Khurd, known for its silverware trade — to Gali Paranthewali, after the paratha vendors who had by then set up in the same lane, and he advertised his shop's address under that new name in newspapers. The paratha trade itself in that lane dates to 1872, when Pandit Gaya Prasad opened the first paratha shop after arriving from Agra; several more paratha-family shops followed between 1875 and 1886, and by 1960 there were around twenty of them, all from that same extended family — a separate lineage from RCKC. RCKC today sells sarees, lehengas, suits, and dupattas, positioned on heritage craftsmanship and traditional Indian weaves rather than food.