The ‘King of Spices’ Saddens the World with his Demise
By: Ashwathy Nair
The man behind the ad of MDH Masala brand with the tagline “Asli Masale Sach Sach, MDH, MDH” saddens the world with his demise at the age of 97. The grand old man of spices, ‘Mahashay’ Dharampal Gulati passed away.
Since our childhood, we have been seeing the most familiar face on (Mahashian Di Hatti) MDH products with his signature red turban and pearl necklace. From the last three weeks, Gulati was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Delhi. He passed away early this morning due to Cardiac Arrest.
From being a drop out of school to facing failure in a variety of businesses such as hardware, soaps, rice trading, and cloth, he ended up joining his father’s business of spices known as ‘Mahashian Di Hatti’. After the partition when he came to India in 1974, he struggled a lot and got successful with re-starting his family business of ground spices as MDH in the year 1959, which sells spices worldwide with 62 products that are available in over 150 different packages, it has a turnover of around ₹1,500 crores.
Now, MDH is a big brand that is recognized worldwide and the spices are being exported across the world to the US, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan. The spices of MDH are sold throughout India that has products selling across a various range from blended spices to ground spices as well as some exotic spices like saffron.
In 2019, Dharampal Gulati was awarded the Padma Bhushan and India’s third-highest civilian award. The news of his demise made a lot of people upset, ranging from kids to millennial and elderlies too, who called him “Dadaji”, “Chacha” and “MDH Uncle” as well.
In the year 2017, Mr Gulati became the highest-paid FMCG CEO in India with a salary of over 21 crores along with being known to be a Philanthropist.
