They launched the label in July, out of a longing for family. In an all-too-familiar scenario brought about by the pandemic, it’d been over a year since any of them had been able to visit their families in India.

“We found ourselves thinking more and more about the people, places, and experiences we missed,” says Aditi. “Fragrances have a really special way of bringing those memories back, and we decided to try recreating some of the familiar scents of our homes.”

Out of all the five senses, it’s been established that the sense of smell has the most primal and immediate association with memories.

And so, to re-create a sense of home away from home, the Carrom team delved into creating their first product – hand-poured soy wax candles. They debuted with five scents which are named Alamari, Beeda, Lalbagh, Malgova and Thillana.

Candles and assorted scent products have been exploding over the last couple of years and are projected to continue upwards, with more and more luxury houses getting into the game. Cue recent notables include Aesop, Celine, Loro Piana, Byredo (with Ikea), Loewe and more.

It’s not hard to fathom why – the pandemic has only enforced focus on improving one’s home as it becomes the be-all and end-all for many people.

What sets Carrom’s versions apart is the firm affirmation to the founders’ South Asian roots. While the scent of each candle varies significantly – Alamari for instance, leans towards the woody with its concoction of sandalwood and oud, while Lalbagh is a lush blend of rose, lotus, jasmine, marigold, and mogra – they’re all intended to capture in olfactory form distinctive memories from the team’s childhoods.

Despite having no official training in fragrances (the team come from backgrounds in law, financial services, consulting and advertising), their works (the result of months of trial and error) have been warmly received, selling out more than half their stock only five days into the initial launch.

Their tradition- and memory-fueled M.O. is further boosted by the team’s artful and intentional approach. Late last month, Carrom expanded its repertoire to include incense in collaboration with Boond Fragrances, a family-run business based in Kannauj, India that specialises in organic attar fragrances.

Grounding these incense sticks are abstract holders that lent a stylishly contemporary touch to a very traditional apparatus. Resembling pools of molten mercury, the holders were custom-designed for Carrom by the Copenhagen-Singapore design studio Christian+Jade.

“Very early on, we decided whatever our brand put its name on – whether on our products themselves, or on social media – should be grounded in our brand values: refined, intentional, and rooted in history. This meant that our visual language and aesthetic had to be thoroughly considered, inspired by tradition, and always complementary with our scents,” says Aditi.

“For instance, when introducing each of our scented candles we used images and copy explaining the origins of the names we’d chosen, as well as the source of our inspiration (ranging from classical art and history to architecture and music). We’ve been really touched that it’s all been received so well!”

Below, the team walks us through their creative process.

“Shared experience and memories are a big part of our ideation process. All of our candle fragrances have come from us discussing the most distinctive scents that have featured in our childhood. There were obviously a few favourites – the freshness of mango season, the comfort of our grandparents’ linen cabinets, the thrill of adults chewing on beeda around us, the ever-present role traditional Indian music and dance played in our lives – and we’ve tried to translate these vignettes into our candles.

Surprisingly, following the feeling made it much easier to identify the right ingredients that would then make up the blend of scents we eventually chose for each candle. What has really highlighted the sense of nostalgia too is when customers smell our candles and feel transported to their own childhoods or memories – it’s made us feel connected to them in a way that is authentic and personal to each of us, uniting us in a sense of community.”

“The candles are fully produced by our team of four here in Singapore. We began with conceptualising the scents we wanted to celebrate – it was important to us that we start with the concept/mood/feeling we wanted to capture, rather than any specific ingredient or scents.

We did some research to see how best to combine fragrances in a way that would ensure a holistic blend with identifiable components, and then began experimenting with small test batches. It took us several attempts of trial and error – from testing various materials for the wicks, choosing a wax most suitable to carry the scent in the strength we wanted, and even doing the research to make sure our ‘recipe’ and processes were accurate – we wanted to make sure our formulation was just right to capture the feelings we were trying to recreate.”

“We like to characterise our scents as nuanced and complex, without being overpowering. The fragrances featured in our candles and our incense are intentionally designed to be complementary: while our candles each use a signature blend of up to seven scents, our incense is designed to highlight single-note scents indigenous to India and central to our culture.

We’re not restricting ourselves to any particular olfactory direction – there’s a wide variety reflected in our products thus far (we’ve got floral, sweet, herbaceous, and woody scents in both our candle and incense ranges), so there’s something for everyone.”