The laddoo auction that has never had a bad year

There are a few things in life you can always count on. Relatives asking about your career at every family function. That one friend who has "started going to the gym" for the fourth time this year. And a laddoo in Hyderabad getting more expensive every single year.

On 25 September 2026, a crowd packed into Balapur, on the southern edge of Hyderabad, to watch people bid on a laddoo. Yes, a laddoo. A 21-kg one that had spent the Ganesh festival sitting in front of the village's idol.

Bidding opened at ₹1,116 and went past last year's record of ₹35 lakh. By the time it was over, Sama Praneeth Reddy, a businessman from Vanasthalipuram, had paid ₹39 lakh for it.

Back in 1994, the very first Balapur laddoo went for ₹450. This year's price is roughly 8,700 times that.

Now, before you start imagining saffron flown in from Mars or a Michelin-starred chef rolling it by hand, let me stop you. It's flour, sugar and ghee. Nobody is paying ₹39 lakh for the taste. They're paying for something else entirely, and that's what makes this story so much fun.

How a farmer started it

Balapur has been making its big laddoo for Ganesh Chaturthi since 1980, but for the first 14 years, nobody thought to auction it. Then, in 1994, a local farmer named Kolan Mohan Reddy won it for ₹450.

What he did with it is the reason we're talking about it today. He shared some with his family and sowed the rest into his fields along with his seeds. That season the crop came in well, and he put the good year down to the laddoo.

So in 1995, he went back and bid again. This time he paid ₹4,500, ten times the first price. Word got around, and so did the bidding wars.

The Kolan family won the first five auctions straight. To this day, they've taken the laddoo home 10 times out of 32.

Thirty-two auctions, not one bad year

Here's the wild part. In 32 auctions, the laddoo has never sold for less than it did the year before. Not once. Some years it barely moved: ₹65,000 in 1999 became ₹66,000 in 2000. Other years it leapt, like the ₹5.7 lakh added between 2021 and 2022 alone.

(The one gap is 2020, when Covid restrictions meant there was no regular auction. That year, the laddoo was presented to the Chief Minister instead.)

Now let's put our investor hats on for a second. Growing about 33% a year for three decades would put most investments to shame. If you'd put ₹450 into gold in 1994, when 10 grams cost about ₹4,598, you'd have had around ₹15,000 on auction day this year, when 10 grams cost roughly ₹1.53 lakh. The laddoo did more than 250 times better.

There's just one tiny problem. Nobody resells the laddoo. It gets eaten. So why on earth does anyone pay this much for it?

Why anyone pays this much

It's lucky. At least, that's the belief. The laddoo is said to bring health, wealth and good fortune to whoever wins it. Winners share it with family and friends, then scatter what's left over their fields, shops and homes, exactly like Kolan Mohan Reddy did back in 1994.

Everyone's watching. The Balapur auction kicks off Hyderabad's Ganesh immersion day. Right after it, the procession winds nearly 19 km to Hussain Sagar lake, and by evening the winner's name is in every local paper.

Politicians love it. The laddoo has gone to a former Hyderabad mayor, a Congress leader, an Andhra Pradesh MLC and a BJP leader. That BJP leader, the 2024 winner, was Kolan Shankar Reddy, from the very family that started it all. And my favourite fun fact: the 2016 winner, Skylab Reddy, was reportedly named after the US space station that crashed to Earth on the day he was born.

Some people just really, really want it. This year's winner said he'd tried and failed for four years before he finally got it. One of the people he was up against was a London-based restaurant owner who bid ₹34.75 lakh in 2025 and came back this year saying he was ready to go up to ₹40 lakh.

Where does the money go?

Not to the organisers, and not to a temple trust. It goes back to Balapur. Over the years, the money has paid for roads, schools, temple repairs and other public works in the village.

And as prices have climbed, the rules have got stricter:

• The opening bid never changes. It's ₹1,116 every year, whether the record stands at ₹1 lakh or ₹35 lakh.
• You pay up front. Locals used to be allowed to pay their bid the following year. Now every bidder first deposits last year's winning amount, then pays the difference if they win.
• Outsiders are welcome now. For years, only previous winners took part. Since 2023, newcomers and non-locals can bid too.

The laddoo that outbid Balapur

Balapur kicked off a trend. Ganesh committees and housing societies all over Hyderabad now auction their own laddoos, and one of them has overtaken the original by a long way.

The record holder is Keerthi Richmond Villas, a gated community in Bandlaguda Jagir. Their auction started around 2016 with a winning bid of ₹25,000. These days, residents (think doctors, chartered accountants and CEOs) team up, pool their money and bid against each other. Their laddoo fetched ₹1.26 crore in 2023, ₹1.87 crore in 2024 and a whopping ₹2.32 crore in 2025. This year, a 5-kg laddoo went for ₹1.01 crore.

The difference? Nobody here is pretending it's about luck. Every rupee goes to the RV Diya Charitable Trust, which says it supports more than 42 NGOs, schoolchildren and medical care for people who can't afford it. It's basically the tastiest way to get a room full of rich neighbours to compete over who can give more.

So, is a laddoo worth ₹39 lakh?

Honestly, I don't think there's a universal answer to that question.

If you just want something sweet with your evening chai, then no. Please do not spend ₹39 lakh on a laddoo. I cannot, in good conscience, sign off on that financial decision.

And if you're feeling unusually generous after all this, you can always buy us a laddoo this Diwali on Ashudumps. We promise it'll cost a lot less than ₹39 lakh.