From washing milk bottles to hitting Rs4 crore turnover, how this engineer built a dairy business in Odisha

After completing his BTech (Electronics) in 2013, Surendra Nath landed a job in the Quality Division of Exide Industries Ltd. When he was transferred to the company’s Pune division, Surendra came across a robust dairy scenario in Maharashtra. The state is one of the leading milk producers in India, supported by cooperative societies.

Influenced by it, Surendra nurtured the dream to float his dairy venture. He met dairy farm owners and farmers in Maharashtra to understand the sector well.  Drawn to entrepreneurship, he decided to return to his native village, Kukudahandi, in Odisha’s Ganjam district.

“India is the world’s largest milk producer, and dairy farming is a good opportunity for entrepreneurs, especially in villages, rural areas, and small towns, which lack a consistent supply of unadulterated milk,” Surendra tells 30Stades.

With rising incomes and urbanization, Indians are consuming more dairy products, leading to a substantial increase in demand. However, the production is not keeping pace with requirements.

Also Read: Engineer starts dairy farm after daughter diagnosed with lactose intolerance; clocks Rs1 crore annual revenues

“I quit my job in 2016 and studied the milk trade scenario in my district. I found a big gap between the demand and supply of milk. That's when I set up Vaisali Dairy Pvt Ltd (VDPL) in 2017,” he says.

His father, A Vidyadhar, now retired from the Indian Postal Department, helped him with the initial investment of Rs6 lakh in setting up small dairy operations with a filling machine for about 1000 bottles and some measuring and quality check tools.

From an engineer with a monthly package of Rs 28,000, he is now a dairy entrepreneur, clocking an annual turnover of over Rs 4 crore.

Also Read: Five women dairy entrepreneurs whipping up success stories in rural India

Initial challenges 

The initial phase was beset with hardships. Only two farmers agreed to sell milk to him. Daily, Surendra would collect 20 to 30 litres of milk from them, wash the bottles manually before filling them with milk using a machine and then deliver them to the doorsteps of his customers. He sold the milk at Rs 36 per litre then. 

“I had to work very hard for almost one-and-a-half-years to earn a monthly profit of only Rs 5000,” recollects Surendra.

In 2019 he procured a bank loan of Rs 24 lakh to expand his setup to 2000 litres capacity. He put up chilling, packaging and washing equipment along with other machines in a setup near his house. This allowed him to store 400 litres of milk collected from 25 farmers daily. He hired three employees to help him.   

“With consistent and good milk quality, the business picked momentum and clocked an annual turnover of Rs 70 lakh in 2019-20,” says Surendra, who completed his BTech from Bhubaneswar-based Silicon Institute of Technology.

By 2021-22, Surendra registered with the State MSME (Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises) Department and could collect more than 700 litres daily from 60 farmers. Soon, the annual turnover shot up to Rs 2 crore. 

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What led to the expansion of business

Now, the dairy operates at its full capacity of 2000 litres collected daily from 250 farmers. Of this, around 50 percent is used to prepare more than 12 milk-based products like chhena poda, ‘chhena’,  curd, ‘challha’, ‘peda’, ‘rasogulla’, and ‘gulapjeamu’. 

The high quality of unadulterated milk, hygienic supply and expansion to newer product categories led to an increase in customer base and revenues.

“I used to get milk from a nearby dairy farm. But I found it adulterated with water. Then I switched to Anant Sagar and found it pure and high quality,” says customer Sunil Kumar Behera of Berhampur, the district headquarters of Ganjam. 

An engineer working for L & T Construction in Jagdalpur, about 6 km from Berhampur, Sunil is also a regular buyer of other products. 

Surendra says, “We undertake stringent laboratory tests before supplying milk to the customers. We buy unprocessed (raw) cow milk packed with calcium, iron, vitamins, carbohydrates, magnesium, potassium, Omega-3 and other nutrients, which are substantially less in processed milk.”

Anant Sagar’s half-litre pouch of crossbred cow milk is sold at Rs 27, while the same amount of indigenous breeds’ milk sells at Rs 30. “Though all our milk by-products sell like hotcakes, our pure cow ghee and packaged 'peda' see the highest demand,” he says. 

The dairy sells ghee at Rs 1100 per kg, and various sweets in packets of 300 gm priced at Rs 100, says Sudhir Padhy, accounts manager at VDPL.

The startup has about 35 employees engaged in collecting, packaging and marketing milk. Now Surendra plans to expand to Ganjam’s adjoining districts Gajapati, Koraput, Kalahandi and Kandhamal. For this, VDPL has procured a bank loan of Rs 70 lakh that has a subsidy component of 35 percent under the State Food Processing Policy.

“We have a Rs 1 crore project to set up a farm over four acres in Kukudahandi. The farm would have 350 cows only of the indigenous varieties,” says Surendra.

(Niroj Ranjan Misra is a Cuttack-based freelance writer. He writes on rural and tribal life, social issues, art and culture, and sports.)

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