Lalit grew up around mustard oil. Every summer in Haryana, the family's mustard seeds would be taken to the local oil press. Hours later, metal cans of freshly extracted oil would return home. He still remembers standing near the machine as a child, eyes burning from the sharp pungency in the air.

At the time, it felt normal. He never questioned it.

Years later, in 2017, Lalit and his wife Mili were travelling through Europe and the United States, staying in Airbnbs and cooking their own meals. At a grocery store in the UK, they picked up a bottle of Indian mustard oil and noticed four unexpected words on the label:
“For external use only.”
They assumed it was unusual. Then they saw the same label again in the United States. Even Indian grocery stores carried bottles marked the same way.

That question followed them home to India.

They began reading research papers, food safety reports, and agricultural studies. Again and again, one term appeared: erucic acid — a fatty acid naturally present in traditional mustard varieties and increasingly discussed in global food regulations.

For Mili, the research felt familiar territory. Before Farmili, she had worked as a research scientist with CSIR in food process measurement. Together, she and Lalit began speaking with agricultural scientists, food technologists, and researchers working on improved mustard seed varieties in India.

That journey eventually led them to scientists connected with Indian agricultural research institutions who had already been working on lower erucic acid mustard varieties.

So Lalit began growing them on the family farm in Haryana.
Season after season, the work evolved. The erucic acid levels came down. Then one variety changed everything entirely.

The oil had almost no pungency.
No burning sensation. No sharp smell filling the room. And yet it still carried everything people valued about mustard oil — its rich fatty acid profile, natural antioxidants, and traditional nutritional value.
For the first time, mustard oil felt light, clean, and versatile enough for both traditional Indian cooking and modern everyday use.

But there was one unexpected problem.
Many people believed mustard oil had to be intensely pungent to be authentic.

That sent Lalit and Mili back into research once again, where they discovered something important: pungency was not fixed. It depended both on the seed variety and on how the oil was extracted.

That understanding shaped Farmili's approach.
Instead of forcing people to choose between tradition and change, Farmili developed multiple mustard oil profiles — from non-pungent and mild to fully traditional pungency — while keeping erucic acid levels significantly lower than conventional mustard oils.

Because for many Indian families, pungency is not just flavour. It is memory.
In Haryana, warm mustard oil massages were part of childhood before the monsoon season arrived. In Bengal, pungent mustard oil remains deeply woven into everyday cooking. Across generations, mustard oil has always carried more than taste alone.

Farmili never wanted to erase that relationship. Only to understand it better.

Today, Farmili mustard oils are grown on the family farm in Haryana, produced without fungicides or insecticides, lab-tested through NABL-certified laboratories, and traceable by the customers.

Four generations of farming taught us to respect mustard oil.
Science taught us how to improve it.
Farmili was built at the intersection of both.