If you grew up in India anytime over the last few decades, you knew the exact hierarchy of the classroom supply case.

Half the joy of going back to school was buying brand-new stationery, even if half of it remained pristine and untouched in a desk drawer for the rest of the term. In that world, Camlin stood right at the center.

School didn't have much room for traditional status symbols, so cool-kid currency was built around what was sitting on your desk. There were distinct tiers to these things. You had the basic tin geometry boxes, but carrying something like a double-decker magnetic box or Camlin’s top-tier geometric sets made an immediate impression.

Then there were the materials themselves: the satisfaction of peeling the paper wrapper off a fresh oil pastel, or opening a brand-new 25-shade pack where every pastel stick sat intact in its plastic groove before the white stick went missing.

As Camlin approaches its 95th year in 2026, it is easy to view all of this as a nostalgia trip — a collective meme for anyone who sat through a school art period between the 1970s and 2010s. But looking past the childhood memories, Camlin’s real impact goes beyond making Indian classrooms recognisable across generations — the brand gave millions of children their first actual access to art education.

Before Camlin became standard issue in backpacks across the country, practicing art in India was expensive. In pre-Independence India, decent paints or paper meant relying on European imports like Winsor & Newton. Quality art supplies were a luxury item, locked behind elite private schools, wealthy families, or professional studios. For almost everyone else, ‘drawing class’ meant cheap newsprint and brittle lead pencils.

That dynamic started shifting in the 1930s when Digambar Parashuram Dandekar and his brother Govind began making ink powders out of a Girgaum chawl (residential building) in Mumbai. Inspired by a cigarette ad praising endurance, they picked the camel as their mascot — a symbol of grit for a local Indian brand competing against foreign colonial imports.

By the late 1950s, the family realised Indian schools needed domestic, affordable art materials. Subhash Dandekar traveled to Glasgow to study colour chemistry and returned to formulate pigments that could handle both India’s weather and the average family budget. When Camlin launched its student-grade poster colours, watercolours, and wax crayons, it flipped the switch. Instead of remaining an exclusive privilege, art earned a permanent spot on the weekly timetable for every student.

The brand's biggest breakthrough arrived with the 'All India Camel Colour Contest'.

While affordable paints made art accessible, this competition turned art into a national tradition. Launched in the late 20th century, it expanded until it was reaching millions of kids across thousands of schools every year. Long before digital portfolios or social media existed, this contest was the ultimate creative equaliser.

For kids in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, where art galleries were non-existent and art class was often just a filler period — the Camel contest was their first taste of national recognition. Winning a certificate or that coveted multi-tier colour set gave parents in middle-class Indian households a reason to take visual creativity seriously.

Camlin didn't stop at the school gate, either. Through the Camel Art Foundation, the brand began offering professional-grade acrylics and oils at accessible prices, while funding grants, exhibitions, and overseas residencies for young artists. They bridged the gap between primary school doodles and gallery fine art practice.

Today, in an era of iPads, Procreate, and highly personalised digital feeds, it’s fair to ask whether Indian childhood still has any shared cultural objects left. Our screens are hyper-customised, but thirty years ago, an 8-year-old in Shillong and an 8-year-old in Ahmedabad were holding the exact same shade of 'Cobalt Blue Hue' poster colour.

Camlin’s legacy today is a case study in cultural architecture: how a domestic brand built the foundational visual literacy of a country, proving that creative tools shouldn't be a luxury, but a public standard.

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