MDH Spices Chairman, Mr. Dharampal Gulati, who started out selling spices in Delhi’s Karol Bagh and went on, at age 94, to become the highest paid FMCG CEO in the country, has died aged 97.
Mr. Gulati was born in Sialkot, in the erstwhile Punjab Province of undivided India, in 1923. He dropped out of school after grade 5 to help his father his father’s spice business, after initially trying his hand at carpentry, before moving on to selling consumer goods.
He was known to have bought a tonga and would charge for rides to and from the New Delhi railway station. His earning helped him set up a small shop and re-start the family spice business.
He went on to turn that business into a multi-crore empire. MDH stands for ‘Mahashian Di Hatti’ and he came to be known as ‘Mahashayji’ or the ‘MDH Dadaji’ among the younger generation.
Mr. Gulati’s rustic appeal was evident in the television commercials featuring himself, endorsing the company’s famous Chat Masala among others, to both the rural and urban consumer, and helped him become a household name.
A millionaire many times over, Mr. Gulati was said to be a philanthropist, donating a significant portion of his income to charity through his trust. The Trust operates schools and hospitals in the Delhi area.
Mr. Gulati was being treated at a city hospital for a few weeks prior to his passing from cardiac arrest.
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