Incense stick production in India

Incense sticks, also known as agarbathi (or agarbatti) and joss sticks, in which an incense paste is rolled or moulded around a bamboo stick, is one of the main forms of incense in India. The method is believed to have started in India, and is distinct from the Nepal/Tibet and Japanese methods of stick making which don't use a bamboo core. Though the method is also used in the west, particularly in America, it is strongly associated with India.

 The basic ingredients are the bamboo stick, the paste (generally made of charcoal dust and joss/jiggit/gum/tabu powder - an adhesive made from the bark of litsea glutinosa and other trees), and the perfume ingredients - which would be a masala powder of ground ingredients into which the stick would be rolled, or a perfume liquid sometimes consisting of synthetic ingredients into which the stick would be dipped. Stick machines are sometimes used, which coat the stick with paste and perfume, though the bulk of production is done by hand rolling at home. There are about 5,000 incense companies in India which take raw unperfumed sticks hand-rolled by approx 2000,000 women working part-time at home, and then apply their own brand of perfume, and package the sticks for sale.  There are about 25 main companies who together account for up to 30% of the market, and around 500 of the companies, including a significant number of the main ones, are based in Bangalore.

Some ingredients