Morde Chocolates

In the early 90s, my mother had added a new dimension to her culinary expertise… baking cakes. Lovely cakes with delicious icing… Pineapple... Strawberry...  Vanilla… Butterscotch… But my favourite was her ‘Melting Chocolate’ Cake. And to get the right taste, she would travel to Hill Road @ Bandra from our house in Vile Parle to buy ‘cooking chocolate’. This chocolate used to be a bit bitter and was available in plain slabs with a simple logo ‘Morde’. We assumed that this must be an imported brand… maybe Swiss or Italian. As these slabs used to be sold loose by weight and packed in butter paper, there was no way you could find out the source of this yummy brown stuff. The only ‘Indian’ chocolate brands we knew in the pre-liberalisation days were ‘Cadbury’ and Pune based ‘Sathe’!

It has been 2 decades since my mother baked a cake… but the ‘melting chocolate’ taste still lingers in my mouth. Recently 3M was pleasantly surprised while passing Manchar (a town about 50 kms north of Pune). Right in front of me was the factory of ‘Morde Foods Pvt. Ltd.’. Obviously, I assumed that this European company had set up shop in India. Thanks to a revelation by a friend and good ol' Google, I realised that ‘Morde’ is not only an Indian brand… but also a Marathi surname – मोरडे! So read this amazing story of Chandrakant Morde, who rose from the humble world of Mumbai Chawls and BMC schools to become the owner of a $30 Million enterprise!

Now every time you taste that yummy chocolate flavour in Taj Group of Hotels, Oberoi Hotels, McDonald's, Yum Foods, Baskin Robbins or Kwality Walls Group… remember a Marathi Manoos has sweetened your life!