Chitale Bandhu turned a Pune sweet counter into a packaged-food network by solving an unusually difficult problem: how to make a regional snack at industrial scale without making it taste anonymous.
The merger built a pantry few rivals can match. A decade later, Kraft Heinz is spending more, reorganizing faster and asking whether famous brands can become growth brands again.
The company that taught America to recognize a soup can is betting its next chapter on a much bigger pantry - from Rao's sauce to Goldfish crackers. Its hardest task is not escaping its past, but making that past useful again.