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, his 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 were surprised. Later, they encountered the same label in the United States, including on bottles sold in Indian grocery stores.

The experience left them with a question they wanted to understand.

Back in India, they began exploring research papers, food safety reports and agricultural studies. One term kept appearing: erucic acid, a fatty acid naturally present in mustard seeds, with levels that vary across varieties.

For Mili, the research was 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 mustard seed varieties with different characteristics.

Their search led them to researchers connected with Indian agricultural institutions who were already working on lower-erucic-acid mustard varieties.

Lalit began growing these varieties on the family farm in Haryana.

Over successive seasons, they explored the differences in erucic acid content and pungency. The work opened up a possibility: mustard oil did not have to be defined by a single flavour profile.

Some of the varieties they explored produced oil with much lower pungency, while retaining the distinctive character of mustard oil. That challenged an assumption they had grown up with: that a strong, sharp smell was essential to an authentic mustard oil.

They also came to appreciate how much the seed itself matters, and how variety and processing can influence the character of the oil.

This understanding shaped Farmili’s approach. Rather than asking people to choose between tradition and change, we wanted to offer a clearer choice.

Today, Farmili’s mustard oil range brings together low-erucic-acid black mustard oils with specified erucic acid thresholds and low pungency, alongside traditional black and yellow mustard oils with their characteristic flavour profiles. The low-erucic-acid range is tested batch by batch for erucic acid content.

Because mustard oil is more than an ingredient. It carries memories, habits and regional food traditions.

In Haryana, warm mustard oil massages are part of many childhood memories. In Bengal, pungent mustard oil has a deeply rooted place in everyday cooking. Across generations, its flavour and aroma have become part of how families remember food and home.

Farmili was never about erasing that relationship. It was about understanding mustard oil more closely and offering people more information and choice.

Four generations of farming taught us to respect the crop.
Research encouraged us to ask better questions.
Farmili grew from bringing those two perspectives together.