Dink, Methi, Nachani or Moha? A Plain-English Guide to Maharashtra's Ladu

Walk through the sweets section of any Maharashtrian shop in November and you will meet a dozen things all called ladu. They are not variations on one sweet. A dink ladu and a nachani ladu have almost nothing in common — different base, different season, different reason for existing, and a per-kilo price that ranges from about ₹712 to ₹2,284 across what UmedMart has on the shelf today.

This guide sorts them out by what is actually inside, so you can buy the right one instead of the one with the nicest photo.

The short version

• Dink ladu — built on edible gum. A winter sweet, rich and heavy, the most expensive family here.
• Methi ladu — fenugreek. Deliberately bitter. An acquired taste and not a gift for someone who has never had one.
• Besan ladu — gram flour and ghee. The festive default, the one most people picture.
• Shengdana and til ladu — groundnut or sesame with jaggery. The everyday ones, and the Sankranti ones.
• Nachani / nagali ladu — ragi. Same sweet, two names, depending on which district you are in.
• Moha ladu — mahua flower. The one most people outside the forest districts have never tried.

One scoping note before anything else: none of the ladus below are upvas food. Groundnut, sesame, ragi, gram flour and fenugreek are all out during a fast. If you are shopping for Navratri, our upvas shopping guide is the right page, not this one.

Dink ladu: the one people mispronounce as a flavour

Dink is not a flavour. It is edible gum — the hardened sap that seeps from babhul and similar trees, collected, dried into crystals, and then fried in ghee until it puffs up into something light and crunchy. That puffed gum is the backbone of the ladu; wheat flour, jaggery, dry fruit and ghee go in around it.

In most Maharashtrian households dink ladu is a cold-weather thing. It is the sweet that gets made when the mornings turn, and it is traditionally what a family sends to a new mother. We are describing a custom here, not making any claim about what it does for you.

It is also where the price spread gets dramatic, because dink and ghee are both expensive and producers use them in very different proportions:

• MAHESHWAR Dink Ladu, 250 g — ₹178 (₹712 a kilo, the cheapest ladu of any kind on the site right now)
• BHIMAI Mahila SHG Dink Laddoo, 1 kg — ₹933 (₹933 a kilo)
• MS MASALE Handmade Dink Ladu, 500 g — ₹384 (₹768 a kilo) or the 200 g at ₹252 (₹1,260 a kilo)
• MS MASALE Dryfruits Dink Ladu, 500 g — ₹444 (₹888 a kilo), or the 200 g at ₹276
• KRANTI Dink Ladu, 250 g — ₹571 (₹2,284 a kilo — more than three times the MAHESHWAR)

That ₹712-to-₹2,284 gap is real and it is mostly about how much dink and dry fruit actually made it into the mix. If you have not bought dink ladu before, start at the smaller, cheaper end and see whether your family finishes the box.

Methi ladu: bitter on purpose

Methi ladu is made on a base of fenugreek seed powder, and fenugreek is bitter. Producers balance it with jaggery, ghee and sometimes dry coconut, but the bitterness is the point — it is not a defect and it will not be cooked out. This is the one ladu we would not send as a surprise gift.

• MAHESHWAR Methi Ladu, 250 g — ₹214 (₹856 a kilo)
• Shravani Mahila SHG Methi Ladoo, Mulgaon, 250 g — ₹274 (₹1,096 a kilo)

Besan ladu: the one everyone means by "ladu"

Roasted gram flour, ghee, sugar or jaggery, cardamom. Nothing exotic, and getting it right is entirely about how patiently the besan was roasted.

Worth saying plainly: besan ladu is the thinnest shelf on the site at the moment. We checked every besan ladu listing individually while writing this, and the only one you can actually buy today is MAHESHWAR Besan Ladu, 250 g at ₹214 (₹856 a kilo). The larger Kolhapur range that normally covers this category is out of stock across every pack size. If you are planning a Diwali tin around besan ladu, plan around a single producer or check back in October.

Shengdana and til ladu: the everyday pair

These are the unfussy ones — roasted groundnut or sesame bound with jaggery, no ghee-heavy preparation, a long shelf life and a low price. Til ladu in particular belongs to Makar Sankranti in January, when til-gul gets handed around with the line til-gul ghya, god god bola.

All three below come from the same group, Pragatishil Parivartan SHG in Parbhani district:

• UMANG GRAH UDHYOG Shengdana Ladu, 170 g — ₹198.33 (₹1,167 a kilo)
• UMANG GRAH UDHYOG Til Ladu, 170 g — ₹204.32 (₹1,202 a kilo)
• UMANG Till Ladu, 170 g — ₹186.35 (₹1,096 a kilo)

Yes, the last two are both 170 g sesame ladu from the same group at a ₹18 difference. We have flagged it internally; until it is sorted out, buy on price.

Nachani and nagali ladu: one sweet, two names

Nachani, nagali and ragi are the same grain. Which word you hear depends on where you are standing — our guide to Maharashtra's millet names untangles that properly. For ladu, what matters is that ragi flour has a distinct earthy taste that jaggery softens but does not hide, and that this is the fastest-growing corner of the category.

The deepest range is from Laxmi Women SHG in Dhule, which makes four versions at two price points:

• Plain Nachani Ladu, 250 g — ₹348 (₹1,392 a kilo)
• Nachani Khobare (ragi and dry coconut), 250 g — ₹348
• Nachani Kaju Badam, 250 g — ₹468 (₹1,872 a kilo)
• Nachani Mahua Phul Mushroom, 250 g — ₹468 — this one contains mushroom. Read that twice before putting it in a gift box; plenty of households do not eat mushroom, and nothing on the front of the pack warns you.

Elsewhere: RAYERI Nachani Laddu, 250 g / 7 pieces — ₹276 (₹1,104 a kilo, made by Ekvera SHG in Raigad, and the only listing here that tells you the piece count); POSHAN SUTRA Nagali Ladu, 180 g — ₹216 (₹1,200 a kilo, Gram Vikas Women SHG, Dhule); and SAKHI SAHELI Nagali Ladu, 250 g — ₹416 (₹1,664 a kilo, Nashik district).

Moha ladu: worth trying once

Moha — mahua — is the flower of Madhuca longifolia, a tree that grows across Maharashtra's forest belt. The flowers are gathered when they drop in spring, dried, and used as a sweetener and a food in their own right. They taste floral and faintly fermented, unlike anything else in this list, and moha ladu is a genuinely regional sweet rather than a mass-market one.

• PRERNA SHG Moha Ladu, 250 g — ₹241 (₹964 a kilo, the easiest place to start)
• ADIVASI Moha Ladu, 300 g — ₹394 (₹1,313 a kilo)
• JAY JIVAN Mohache Ladu, 250 g — ₹338 (₹1,352 a kilo)
• UNNATI SHG Moha Ladu — ₹238 (pack weight is not stated on the listing, so we cannot give you a per-kilo figure)

The rest of the shelf

A few that do not belong to any of the families above but are worth knowing:

• SHALAN Kharik Khobra Ladu, 200 g — ₹214 — dried dates and dry coconut, ₹1,070 a kilo.
• JYOSHI Pancharatna Ladu, 200 g — ₹276 — "five jewels", a five-ingredient mix. The listing does not say which five, so ask before serving it to anyone with a nut allergy.
• ADIVASI Millet Ladu, 250 g — ₹394 and TULSHI Soya Poha Ladu, 500 g — ₹444 (₹888 a kilo).
• SWAMINI Amla Ladu, 100 g — ₹178 and SAMARTH Awala Ladu, 100 g — ₹156 — amla and awala are the same fruit. Sour-sweet, and small packs by design.
• NAVJYOT Dryfruit Ladu, 200 g — ₹292 and Durga Ukda Rice Ladu, 10 pieces — ₹166.

How to read a ladu price

Three habits will save you money and disappointment.

Convert to per kilo before comparing anything. Ladu packs come in 100 g, 170 g, 180 g, 200 g, 250 g, 300 g, 500 g and 1 kg, which makes shelf prices useless on their own. MS MASALE dink at ₹252 looks cheaper than the same producer's ₹384 pack, but it costs ₹1,260 a kilo against ₹768.

Buy the small pack first when a ladu is new to you. Methi and moha in particular are strong flavours. A 200 g trial costs a couple of hundred rupees; a kilo you do not like costs a lot more than that.

Check what is actually in it, not what the name implies. The mushroom in one of the nachani ladus is the clearest example, but "pancharatna" and "dryfruit" are both descriptions that can hide a nut you are avoiding.

What is not available right now

We checked every ladu listing on the site individually for this piece rather than trusting the stock tags, and it is only fair to tell you what came back empty, six weeks out from Diwali: rava ladu and motichur ladu are entirely unavailable, as is almost all besan ladu. Kaju and kaju-til ladu are out. So is rajgira laddu, which is the one that would have been useful for Navratri. If you were counting on any of those, the honest answer is to plan around chakli, dink, nachani and moha this year — those shelves are deep.

Related reading

• Bhajani, Tandul or Sabudana? A Plain-English Guide to Maharashtra's Chakli — the savoury half of the same faral tin
• Jwari, Bajri, Nachni, Vari: Maharashtra's Millet Names, Decoded — for the nachani / nagali / ragi question
• Deshi Gul: Block, Cubes or Powder? — most of these ladus are sweetened with jaggery
• The Navratri upvas shopping guide — for fasting, where none of these belong
• Diwali corporate gifting, budget by budget — if you are buying in bulk

Browse the full Snacks and Millets collections, or the Jaggery & Sweeteners shelf if you would rather make your own.

Every price and availability check in this guide was made on 24 September 2026, per individual product. Stock on handmade SHG products moves quickly, so the product page is always the final word.