If you grew up in India, there is a good chance you have used a Nataraj or Apsara pencil.
Maybe it was the familiar red-and-black Nataraj in your school pencil box. Or perhaps you remember Apsara pencils from drawing classes, examinations or art projects.
For years, many Indian students treated them as competing brands.
But there is a surprising connection between the two.
Nataraj and Apsara are both brands of the same company, Hindustan Pencils Pvt. Ltd.
The company has been making stationery in India since 1958 and has grown from a pencil manufacturer into a much larger stationery business, with products ranging from pencils and erasers to sharpeners, scales, art materials and pens. Today, Hindustan Pencils says its products are exported to more than 50 countries across five continents.
So how did one company build two of India’s most recognizable pencil brands?
And how did a pencil manufacturer started in the 1950s become such a familiar part of school life in India?
How Did Hindustan Pencils Start?
The story of Hindustan Pencils begins in 1958.
The company was founded by B. J. Sanghvi, Ramnath Mehra and Mansookani, according to company records and business profiles.
At the time, India’s stationery industry was very different from what it is today.
Imported products were still important in several categories, while India’s growing population and expanding education system created demand for affordable writing materials.
The founders saw an opportunity in something deceptively simple:
the pencil.
Their goal was to manufacture pencils in India that could be sold at an affordable price while maintaining consistent quality.
The company eventually became Hindustan Pencils Pvt. Ltd., and Mumbai became closely associated with the business.
Hindustan Pencils now describes itself as India’s largest pencil-manufacturing company, with a history stretching back more than six decades.
Why Did the Founders Go to Germany?
One interesting part of the company’s early story is that the founders did not simply start manufacturing pencils without preparation.
Business profiles of Hindustan Pencils say the founders travelled to Germany to learn pencil manufacturing techniques before establishing the business in India.
That detail helps explain the company’s early approach.
The founders were not only trying to sell another stationery product. They were learning how pencils were manufactured and then applying that knowledge to build a domestic manufacturing business.
That decision became important as the company expanded.
Instead of remaining dependent on imported pencils, Hindustan Pencils developed its own manufacturing capabilities in India.
Over time, the company also became increasingly vertically integrated, producing many of the components used in its stationery products itself.
Its company catalogue says this backward integration helps it maintain greater control over quality and production.
How Nataraj Became the Company’s First Major Brand
The first major brand created by Hindustan Pencils was Nataraj.
The company says Nataraj was its first brand and was built around the idea of providing pencils for everyone.
That positioning was important.
A pencil is a simple product, but millions of children use one every day.
The brand therefore had to compete on three things:
Price.
Reliability.
Availability.
Nataraj gradually became associated with school stationery across India.
Its familiar red-and-black appearance became particularly recognizable, and the brand eventually expanded beyond traditional graphite pencils into coloured pencils, sharpeners, erasers, pens and other stationery products.
Hindustan Pencils still describes Nataraj as one of its flagship brands. Its current brand portfolio includes Nataraj alongside Apsara and Nataraj Global.
When Did Apsara Enter the Story?
The second major chapter began with Apsara.
Hindustan Pencils says Apsara was launched in the 1970s as a premium stationery brand, initially with drawing pencils.
Writing pencils and other stationery products were added later, particularly during the 1990s.
This gave the company something interesting.
It now had two brands serving somewhat different consumer expectations.
Nataraj developed around affordability, everyday school use and broad accessibility.
Apsara was positioned more toward premium stationery, drawing and quality-focused products.
Both came from the same manufacturer.
That distinction helped Hindustan Pencils reach different groups of customers without abandoning the mass-market strength of Nataraj.
Why Do Nataraj and Apsara Feel Like Competing Brands?
This is probably the most interesting part of the business story.
If you walk into a stationery shop and see Nataraj and Apsara next to each other, they can look like competitors.
But they are actually part of the same company.
This is a classic example of brand segmentation.
Instead of asking one brand to appeal to everyone, Hindustan Pencils developed different identities.
Nataraj could remain strongly associated with everyday value and school stationery.
Apsara could occupy a more premium and creative position.
The company has continued to develop separate products and marketing around the two brands.
For example, Hindustan Pencils has introduced products such as the Apsara Absolute Pencil, Apsara Matt Magic Pencil, Nataraj Fluro Pencils, Nataraj Gelix Gel Pen and other specialized stationery products.
The strategy has allowed the company to keep two familiar names while continuing to innovate around each brand.
What Does Hindustan Pencils Make Today?
Hindustan Pencils is no longer simply a pencil company.
Its current product range includes:
- Graphite pencils
- Coloured pencils
- Pens
- Erasers
- Sharpeners
- Scales
- Crayons
- Art materials
- Other school and office stationery
The company’s own catalogue gives an idea of the scale of its manufacturing operation.
It says its facilities can produce approximately:
8.5 million pencils every day
along with:
1.7 million sharpeners
2.7 million erasers
300,000 scales
and approximately 1 million pens per day.
Those numbers illustrate how far the company has moved from its original focus on pencils.
It has become a broader stationery manufacturer.
The Pencil Village of Kashmir
There is another fascinating story hidden inside the Indian pencil industry.
It is not about a big corporate office.
It is about a village in Pulwama district, Jammu and Kashmir.
The village is known as Oukhoo, also spelled Ookhu or Ukhoo in different reports, and is widely referred to as the “Pencil Village of India.”
Its connection with pencils comes from something that most consumers never see.
Wooden pencil slats.
Before a wooden pencil reaches a school pencil box, the wood has to be processed into thin slats that can be shaped and assembled around the graphite core.
Kashmir’s poplar wood became particularly important to this part of the supply chain.
Hindustan Pencils became involved with entrepreneurs in the region as local businesses developed the ability to manufacture pencil slats.
A Hindustan Times report described Oukhoo as a hub for pencil-slat production and reported that local units supplied raw material to major pencil manufacturers, including Hindustan Pencils.
More recent reporting has continued to document the village’s role in India’s pencil supply chain.
A 2026 Mint report describes how local entrepreneurs shifted from supplying poplar logs to producing precision pencil slats, with individual slats measuring roughly 5.2 to 5.5 millimetres thick.
This is an important part of the story because it shows that India’s pencil industry is not simply about the brands printed on the finished product.
There is an entire supply chain behind a pencil.
How Big Is Hindustan Pencils Today?
Hindustan Pencils has grown considerably since 1958.
The company says its products are now exported to more than 50 countries across five continents.
Its company catalogue also describes it as India’s largest primary-school stationery manufacturer and reports production of millions of stationery products every day.
An Economic Times profile published in 2019 reported that Hindustan Pencils was producing about 8 million pencils a day at the time and had a 45% market share.
Because that market-share figure is from 2019, it should not be presented as the company’s current market share without newer independent data.
That distinction matters.
It is tempting to repeat old market-share numbers whenever discussing a famous company, but a historical figure should be clearly dated.
What is less disputed is the company’s scale, longevity and international presence.
A Family Business That Spanned Generations
Hindustan Pencils also has a strong family-business element.
After the company’s early years, B. J. Sanghvi, also known as Babubhai, became the key figure in the business.
Later generations of the Sanghvi family became involved in the company’s management.
An Economic Times profile identified Harendra and Kirti Sanghvi as managing directors and reported that the next generation, including Bhowmik and Dhruman, had also taken senior roles in the business.
Corporate records also list Harendra B. Sanghvi and Kirti B. Sanghvi as managing directors, while Bhowmik Harendra Sanghvi and Dhruman Kishore Sanghvi appear among the company’s directors.
That makes Hindustan Pencils an interesting example of a family business that has remained connected to its original industry while expanding across generations.
How Nataraj and Apsara Have Changed
One reason the two brands have remained recognizable is that neither has remained frozen in time.
Hindustan Pencils has continued introducing new products and variations.
For example, Apsara has expanded into products aimed at drawing, colouring and creative activities.
Nataraj has also expanded beyond traditional pencils.
In 2024, the company introduced Nataraj Hidey Pencils, a camouflage-themed pencil designed with a dark-writing feature. The product was showcased internationally at Paperworld before its wider launch.
The company has also introduced products aimed at specific users, including left-handed consumers and children.
This is an important part of the brands’ longevity.
The basic product remains a pencil, but the company continues finding new ways to package, design and position it.
Why Nataraj and Apsara Became Household Names
The success of Nataraj and Apsara is not simply about making pencils.
It is about making an ordinary product familiar.
Think about how often a pencil is used.
A child may first encounter Nataraj or Apsara in school.
The same brand may then appear in a parent’s home.
Later, the child may continue using the same brand for college, drawing or office work.
That creates something valuable for a stationery company: habit
Once a product becomes part of everyday life, consumers do not necessarily think about the manufacturer behind it.
They remember the brand.
And this is perhaps the biggest achievement of Hindustan Pencils.
The company name may not be as familiar to consumers as Nataraj or Apsara, but those two brands have become part of India’s everyday stationery culture.
The Story Behind Two Familiar Pencil Brands
The next time you see a Nataraj and Apsara pencil sitting next to each other in a stationery shop, there is a good chance you will see them differently.
They may look like competing brands.
But both come from the same company.
Hindustan Pencils began in 1958, when its founders set out to build a domestic pencil manufacturing business. Nataraj became its first major brand, while Apsara followed in the 1970s with a more premium and art-oriented positioning.
Over the decades, the company expanded into a much wider stationery business.
Its products now reach more than 50 countries, while its manufacturing operations produce millions of stationery products every day.
And somewhere in that journey is another story worth remembering.
From the factories of a Mumbai-based company to the pencil-slat workshops of Kashmir, the story of a simple school pencil connects businesses, workers, raw materials and generations of Indian consumers.
That may be the most interesting thing about Nataraj and Apsara.
They are not just two pencil brands.
They are two familiar names from a much bigger Indian manufacturing story.
Neha Singh writes about Indian history, city origins, business histories and cultural stories. Her work focuses on researching historical records, archives, newspaper reports and institutional sources to explain how places, brands and traditions developed – Linkedin Profile
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