MDH Spices owner Dharampal Gulati, fondly known as “Mahashayji”, died on Thursday. He suffered a cardiac arrest. He had been receiving treatment at a hospital in Delhi for the past three weeks.
The 98-year-old was the face of the MDH brand. He was also referred to as the “grand old man of spices”. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honor, in 2019.
Twitter was flooded with tributes for Mahashayji. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted “India’s most inspiring entrepreneur, MDH owner Dharm Pal Mahashay passed away this morning. I have never met such an inspiring and lively soul. May his soul rest in peace.”
Gulati was India’s highest-paid consumer products CEO for the year 2017. That year, he had taken home over Rs 21 crore as salary, outearning celebrity honchos like Adi Godrej and Vivek Gambhir of Godrej Consumer, Sanjiv Mehta of Hindustan Unilever, and YC Deveshwar of ITC.
The company was started by the late Gulati’s father Chuni Lal as a small shop in Sialkot, Pakistan back in 1919. After the partition of the country, Gulati moved to a shop in Karol Bagh in Delhi and opened 15 factories supplying 1000 dealers in India. It is now a sprawling Rs 1500 crore business empire which runs the masala company, several schools, and a hospital
“My motivation to work is being sincere in product quality sold at affordable prices. And nearly 90% of my salary goes to a charity in my capacity,” the second-generation entrepreneur who joined MDH over six decades ago.