Ajanta Sweets Since 1986: A Bareilly Legacy Built by Two Generations

Every long-running sweet shop has a story behind the counter. Here is how Ajanta went from one family-run shop in Bareilly to 24 outlets across Uttar Pradesh.

A family counter, not a franchise

Ajanta Sweets N’ Bakes started in Bareilly in 1986 as a family-run sweets counter, built by Mr. Ram Avatar Ahuja. Like most mithai businesses of that era, it began small — built on consistency, honest ingredients and the kind of daily discipline that does not show up in any single sweet, but shows up over years of customers coming back.

Passing the counter down

Over time, the business passed into the hands of the next generation, with Amit Ahuja carrying the brand forward. That kind of transition — from founder to son — is where a lot of family sweet shops either lose their identity or hold onto it. At Ajanta, the recipes, the ghee standard and the basic promise stayed the same even as the business grew well beyond a single counter.

From one shop to 24 outlets

What began as a single Bareilly counter now operates across 24 outlets, spanning Bareilly, Rampur, Pilibhit and Lucknow. Growth on that scale usually forces a choice between consistency and convenience — more outlets can mean more variation in quality if standards are not held firmly across every counter. Keeping every outlet built around the same ghee standard and the same core recipes has been the deliberate trade-off Ajanta has made in exchange for slower, steadier growth.

What has not changed

Through nearly four decades, a few things have stayed fixed: pure desi ghee in the traditional sweets range, fresh daily preparation over long shelf storage, and a focus on the mithai categories Bareilly grew up on — gulab jamun, peda, barfi, laddoo and festival specials like gujiya. Newer additions, from namkeen and snacks to Brickels gelato, have been layered on around that core rather than replacing it.

Today

Ajanta Sweets N’ Bakes is now one of the more recognised mithai names across Bareilly and the surrounding cities it serves, with a growing number of Google reviews and a customer base that spans multiple generations of the same families. Read the full story on our About page, or find the outlet nearest you.