Around Town: Inside Ladu Samrat’s round-the-clock hustle to feed Lalbaug and the whole of Mumbai this Ganpati

Ladu Samrat, the Lalbaug-based legacy brand, sells over 10,000 kg of modaks during Ganpati season. (Express photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)

At Ladu Samrat’s factory in Chinchpokli, the machines haven’t stopped since Thursday, when preparations began ahead of Ganpati, which begins Monday, September 14 — every shift now making only sweets, with modaks leading the charge. By the time the 10-day festival wraps with visarjan on September 24, the Lalbaug-based legacy brand expects to sell over 10,000 kg of modaks, including 4,000 kg of mawa modak and 3,500 kg of motichoor laddu, alongside a near-equal volume of snacks, based on sales trends from previous years.

Located almost where vehicles are stopped and pedestrian movement begins for the famed Lalbaugcha Raja, with Ganesh Galli’s Mumbai Cha Raja right behind it, Ladu Samrat sees the neighbourhood transform during Ganpati. It becomes a post-darshan stop for misal pav, vada pav and poori bhaji, needs as many as 20,000 pavs a day and, perhaps most importantly, becomes the landmark people use to coordinate and meet up.

Becoming the ‘samrat’

Ladu Samrat began as Maharashtra Ladu Samrat in 1967, when Maruti Rakshe opened a 150-sq-ft shop in Veer Mahal selling a handful of items, including kadak boondi ladu, poha chivda, Mahalaxmi chivda, batata vada and kothimbir vadi. Unfortunately, the building fell in 1983. To make ends meet, his son Kamlakar Rakshe took on multiple jobs, including working in a laundry and driving a taxi, before restarting his father’s business in 1992 — now named Mumbai Ladu Samrat, spread across 180 sq ft.

Like his father, he too started with the same handful of items and expanded over the years, adding besan ladu, boondi ladu, barfi, pede, a variety of chivda, bhakarwadi and more. The hot section grew too, from serving only batata vada to vada pav, misal pav, South Indian items like dosa and idli, and upvas fare like sabudana vada, khichdi, pattice, missal, puri bhaji and dosa, all made vrat-compliant.

“Our upvas items are so popular that it is a business niche of its own, accounting for as much as 25 per cent of our sales. Earlier it used to be available only on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays but now it’s available all days of the week. In fact, our Jain items are also very popular,” said Siddhant Rakshe, 32, a hotel management graduate who has been part of the business since 2010 but officially took over in 2023. The changes he’s made since may not be obvious on the surface, but they show up in service, and most of all, in the numbers. The numbers reflect that change: in two years, sales of motichoor ladu (sold at Rs 600/kg) have gone up eightfold.

Inside the shop, Siddhant is manning the cash counter, wearing a T-shirt printed with Ganesha’s face and the line “No Roses, Only Hibiscus” — a nod to Bappa’s favoured flower. Around him are kadak boondi ladus in various sizes — a round 21-kg ladu sold for Rs 9,200 and a modak-shaped 11-kg ladu for Rs 6,200 — sitting alongside modaks in various sizes and flavours that take over most of the display. There’s also their famous 56-bhog thali, featuring 56 varieties of mithai and priced at Rs 3,000 onwards, whose demand will peak on Monday, Day 1 of the festivities.

Siddhant Rakshe mans the cash counter, his T-shirt printed with Ganesha’s face and the line “No Roses, Only Hibiscus” is a nod to Bappa’s favourite flower. Rakshe took over the business formally in 2023. (Express photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)

Special preparations for Bappa

The business is strong through the year, but the 10-day Ganpati festival is when Ladu Samrat hits its peak. Customer-facing hours stretch from the usual 7 am-10 pm to 6 am-2 am, while behind the scenes, the factory runs round the clock making only mithai, which means every savoury item needed for the festival has to be planned and prepared well in advance.

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“Preparation begins at least 15 days in advance. One of the key parts is managing the staff — checking who is travelling on which days, how to rotate shifts, who can do double shifts or work extended hours, and so on. They are all compensated accordingly,” said Siddhant.

Inside the factory, staff work in tandem: large machines knead the mawa mixture, while moulds of various sizes are used to shape it into modaks. Some ensure the mixture is cooked to the right consistency, while others work in pairs to shape them. One presses the mixture into the mould, the other removes and stacks the finished pieces neatly onto large plates.

The second part of the preparation, he added, involves studying the previous year’s sales. “We look at how much of a particular modak we sold and then estimate the preparation for this year. We also look at how much, say, misal pav we sold last year and then estimate the misal farsan we need to prepare for 15 days, and so on, because everything is made in-house. There’s also a logistical challenge, since the road in front of us gets shut, so our storage needs go up by at least two times.” The shop also has to arrange permissions for its water tankers and its pav supplier to get through — it needs 20,000 pavs a day.

Inside the factory, staff work in tandem — machines knead mawa, while workers in pairs shape modaks using moulds, one pressing mixture in, the other stacking finished pieces onto large plates. (Express photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)

Another festival favourite is Ukadiche Modak, demand for which spikes sharply on day one: Ladu Samrat sells 10,000-12,000 pieces of it in a single day, separate from the 10,000 kg of modaks sold across the full 10-day festival. Priced at Rs 45 a piece, the modak has also been quietly upgraded — Siddhant increased the stuffing of jaggery, coconut, nuts and cardamom, which shows up directly in the weight: each piece has gone from 61 gm to 94 gm.

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“We sell nearly 10,000-12,000 pieces of Ukadiche modaks on day one of Ganpati festivities because that’s considered to be the main bhog for Ganpati Bappa during pran pratishtha. On the first day, it’s absolute madness… the network gets jammed because of the crowd, people struggle to order via Swiggy and Zomato, otherwise we would easily double up on sales,” he said. To keep up, as many as 12 people work through the entire night before, making these modaks fresh.

Ladu Samrat also runs a cloud kitchen in Grant Road to manage deliveries in South Bombay better — its online business now accounts for 50 per cent of its sales. The brand is now expanding its footprint into the suburbs too, with its first branch on the way. “We are opening a full-fledged retail store in Kandivali. It should be ready in a month’s time,” said Siddhant.

While Ladu Samrat has a cloud kitchen in Grant Road for delivery, which is now 50 per cent of their business, they are also expanding their footprint in suburbs. Coming up next is its first branch. “We are opening up a full-fledged retail store in Kandivali. It should be ready in a month’s time,” shared Siddhant.

© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd

Heena Khandelwal is a Special Correspondent with The Indian Express, Mumbai. She covers a wide range of subjects from relationship and gender to theatre and food. To get in touch, write to heena.khandelwal@expressindia.com ... Read More

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