Pass by Colaba and there are perfume shops lining the street. Among them is 75-year-old Ajmal Perfumes — one of the oldest in the city, today with 400 stores across 70 countries and 70 in India alone. The journey, however, began with a young man from Hojai, a small village about 165 kilometres from Guwahati, Assam, in 1950. “Our founder, my grandfather Ajmal Ali, was a farmer. He discovered oud because it was essentially in the backyard. Oud to us is what jasmine is to people in Madurai. Someone introduced him to the fact that Arabs buy the wood, burn it and extract an oil they use as perfume. Initially he sourced it from the jungles and gave it to traders who brought it to Bombay. Then, like an entrepreneur, he asked himself the obvious question — why give it to someone else?” said his grandson and CEO, Abdulla Ajmal, 53. Ajmal Ali moved his entire family to Bombay in the 1960s, believing the city could offer his children better education and opportunities.…