This Navaratri, a Pack of traditional sweets, including karupatti halwa and ghee badusha, could be your return gifts. Aavin has started selling the special sweets meant for Deepavali earlier than usual.

"Navaratri and Ayudha Puja too are occasions when people buy sweets, which is why the sweets are on sale now. Due to modified atmosphere packaging, their shelf life has been extended by a few more days. People need not worry about them spoiling quickly. The packaging is done at our Ambattur dairy, where the sweets are also manufactured," a source in Aavin said.

The sweets, including ghee halwa, moti pak, nuts halwa and kaju kathli, come in 250-g packs. A combo pack of 500 g is also available. "Smaller packs of 100 g will be ideal to give away instead of blouse pieces and other gifts. These could be in small boxes that can be reused. We usually look for gifts that cost under ₹150 each. The rasagolla and smaller khoa packs are more suitable for this," said Moti Chandrika, a resident of Perungudi.

For the first time, Aavin has also introduced butter murukku and special mixture that come in 259-g packs. "Usually customers buy sweets from us and have to go to some other shop to buy namkeen, we are changing that. Similarly, we are trying to standardise our packaging," another Aavin source said.

Meanwhile, Aavin has hiked the prices of its sweets, including khoa, gulab jamun and rasagolla. "This has been done due to the cost of ghee going up. It is a very important ingredient in all our sweets. However, when you compare with leading private brands, ours is the most cost effective. If you take the case of kaju pista roll, ours is priced at ₹320 per 250 g, while other brands sell the same amount for ₹400 or ₹425," the source said.