Before there were influencers, there was the Parle-G girl. Round face, straight-cut fringe, staring blankly into the void — or perhaps your soul — as you bit into a biscuit that cost less than an apple. You’ve seen her. You’ve dunked her biscuit. You’ve probably argued about her real identity. And if you grew up in India, chances are, she was part of your lunchbox. She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she has been the moment for the past 80 years.
In the film Welcome, Uday Shetty (Nana Patekar) says, “Aaj kal biscuit ko bhee Parle jee kehte hai.” (“We are such a respectful country, we even address our biscuits as ‘ji'.”) Can’t say whether other people deserve such respect, but Parle-G certainly does.
In 1929, Mohanlal Dayal Chauhan, a man with a background in tailoring, set up a confectionery unit in a suburb of Mumbai called Vile Parle. He had twelve workers, German machinery, and a firm belief in swadeshi. First came orange candy. Then, in 1939, came the biscuits. Back then, biscuits were a luxury — they were British, buttery, and totally unaffordable. So Chauhan decided to flip the narrative. Why should only the English have all the tea-time fun?
He launched 'Parle Gluco', an Indian-made glucose biscuit meant for Indian pockets and Indian taste buds. No fuss, no frills. Just a dry, slightly sweet biscuit that made your tea better. During World War II, these biscuits were even shipped to the British Army. That's right: the colonisers were eating Indian biscuits in their rations. Small victories.
Post-independence, Parle doubled down on its homegrown credentials. Their ad campaign framed the biscuit as a national pride moment — a homegrown alternative to British products. Over the years, Parle Gluco became the biscuit. But there was one small problem. Everyone started copying it. New biscuit brands popped up with similar names and packaging. One even used the same wax-paper wrapper and slapped a baby on it too. It got messy.
So in 1982, Parle Gluco was rebranded to Parle-G. G for Glucose. Or Genius. Or whatever you want it to mean. The name stuck, and so did the packaging. That yellow-and-white wrapper with the little girl became instantly recognisable. She wasn’t real. She wasn’t Sudha Murthy. She was an illustration made by Maganlal Dahiya at Everest Advertising. And she has never aged.
In the late ’90s, Parle-G made a smart move. They sponsored Shaktimaan, India’s first superhero show. Sunday mornings across Indian households now had a pattern: title song, Shaktimaan’s swirling entrance, a moral lesson, and somewhere in between, a Parle-G ad slot.
Meanwhile, the biscuit took over the country. By the 2000s, Parle-G was selling over a billion packets a month. Think about that. That’s the equivalent of every single person in India eating a packet — every single month. And still asking for more.
Parle-G became everything. Snack. Breakfast. School tiffin. Train food. Exam fuel. Emergency ration. Even temple prasad in some places. During the COVID-19 lockdown, NGOs handed out Parle-G packets as relief food. The company itself donated three crore packets. When all else failed, Parle-G did not.
It also crossed borders. Incredibly, it became the top-selling biscuit brand in China. But even Parle-G couldn’t dodge inflation forever. As wheat and sugar prices went up, the biscuit got thinner. The Rs. 5 pack still looked the same, but the biscuits inside had lost a little weight. Nobody complained. You still got enough to dunk into your tea, or crush into a bowl of milk, or share with your dog. Some things don’t need to be fancy to work.
In a 2007 study, the Parle-G baby was found to be the third most recognisable logo in India, after the Indian National Congress’s hand symbol and the ISI mark. Imagine tha: a humble biscuit ranked just below a national political party and the country’s quality control stamp.
Over time, Parle Products branched out. They split the business across different family factions. There were court cases about who could use the 'Parle' name. But through all of this, the biscuit stayed put. Same look. Same taste. Same slightly disconcerting stare from its illustated baby. So next time you dunk one in your tea, raise a silent toast to the biscuit that outlived empires, survived GST, fed a nation, and looked cute while doing it.
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