IIM grad quits Mahindra Tractors to start a healthy food business; clocks Rs1.2 crore turnover and 150% annual growth

In 2013, when Satyabrath Muni enrolled at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, he saw entrepreneurs and business heirs all around him. He always wanted to start something of his own and IIM-A exposed him to fresh ideas.

“Some of my batchmates were startup founders, and others were heirs of business houses, etc. I was deeply impacted by the LEM (Laboratory in Entrepreneurial Motivation) course, conducted by IIM-A alumnus Sunil Handa,” Satyabrath tells 30Stades. 

“However, I was risk-averse initially and instead of entrepreneurship, I started my career with (Indian tractor giant) TAFE in Chennai in 2015,” he says. 

The stint at TAFE was followed by Mahindra Tractors, says Satyabrath from Lochapada in Berhampur, Odisha. He completed his B.Tech in Agricultural Engineering from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore in 2013.  

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How Coronavirus led to entrepreneurship

While he was shying away from taking risks, the Coronavirus pandemic shook him. “During the first wave, in August-September 2020, both my parents were in ICU when I was working from home in Berhampur. After ten days when my parents returned from the ICU, my father, a very healthy person with regular yoga practice and a balanced diet, was severely affected. He had become so frail that he couldn't walk and live a regular life,” recollects Satyabrath. 

To speed up his recovery, Satyabrath’s mother made chatua -- a traditional powdered mixture of millets, cereals, moringa, dry fruits, pulses and other ingredients. She gave it to his father every morning. 

“By the second month, my father was back to normal with the same physique and energy levels,” Satyabrath says. 

For him, this experience was life-changing as it showed the power of healthy food and the crucial role of diet in overall well-being. “After this, I decided to start a food tech startup focused on developing processed food products from traditional and local ingredients without any harmful preservatives or chemicals,” the food entrepreneur says.

Satyabrath quit his job as a product manager at Mahindra Tractors and set up Munico Foods Pvt Ltd on February 8, 2022, to provide nutritious, traditional and easy-to-prepare food to consumers.

Today, Munico Foods’s product range includes immunity-boosting papads of millet, moringa, mushroom and jackfruit and millet-based probiotic drinks Millet+ and Gutzy. Munico also makes fruit pulp-based Gutzy POP candies and nutritional supplement powders for kids, women, diabetics and fitness enthusiasts.

He says Gutzy is India's first packaged probiotic drink made from millet. Inspired by Odisha's traditional drink Tanka Torani, Gutzy uses foxtail millet as the base and blends it with spices. 

“I believe that the power of traditional ingredients like millets, moringa, and fermented foods can be harnessed to address today’s nutritional challenges,” he says. 

“By combining modern food processing techniques with the wisdom of traditional Indian foods, we have developed products that are nutritious, convenient and appealing to urban consumers,” he adds. 

Munico has developed the product technology in-house and created a robust marketing channel for its products. “Traditional raw materials like millets and jackfruit require special production techniques. Our innovation has given Munico a head start over competitors,” says Satyabrath. 

Investment, challenges and growth

He made an initial investment of Rs 10 lakh and set up a small factory at Lochapada for his food business. The first product from Munico was the chatau powder his mother made and Berhampur was the launch market. “It was difficult to convince people to try our products as good ingredients come at a high price and most customers did not want to pay,” he says.

“Marketing was the biggest challenge in the initial days. We started selling with a team of two people, but the volumes were low and after a few months, it was difficult to pay them a salary.”

At this point, Satyabrata himself started going to the market. “Selling directly to retailers and customers showed me where we went wrong. It made me aware of the importance of a strong sales team for a product-led startup,” Satyabrath says. 

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With that experience, he introduced low-priced stock-keeping units (SKU) and other products. Munico's millet-based probiotic drink Millet+ is priced at Rs20 for a 250 ml bottle and available in Odisha while Gutzy is a premium product priced at Rs50 for a 250 ml bottle and is available online and offline.

“We also established good relationships with many distributors, wholesalers and retailers who not just became our business partners but also our biggest advocates and support system,” he adds.

“Currently, we have two factories – the Lochapada unit produces over 9000 bottles of Munico Millet+ and Gutzy and 10,000 candies daily. The new factory in Bhairavi, about 15 km from Berhampur, will go live on April 30 this year. It has a daily capacity to produce up to 2 lakh bottles of probiotic drinks, 2 lakh Gutzy POP candies, 1000 kg papads, and 5000 kg of food supplements, says Satyabrath. 

Munico Foods had revenues of Rs48 lakh in FY24 and closed the last fiscal with Rs.1.2 crore, a 150 percent growth. 

“In the current financial year, we are targeting revenue of Rs 6 crore, a five times year-on-year growth on the back of our new factory and expansion to Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh,” Satyabrath says.

His confidence stems from the rising demand for ready-to-cook or ready-to-prepare food products based on healthy and natural ingredients. 

Also Read: Odisha women turn entrepreneurs with millet food business; clock Rs2 crore annual turnover

Almost 80 percent of Munico’s demand is from rural and semi-rural areas where it caters to retailers. “Our partners make higher than average margins,” he adds.

Empowering millet farmers

He says millets are not only the key ingredients in healthy snacks and foods but also reduce carbon footprint and support local farmers as they are drought-resistant and require less water and chemical inputs compared to other cereal crops.

Satyabrath says the company sources its millets mostly from Odisha’s tribal belts of Koraput, Gajapati, Kandhamal etc. “Our sourcing helps farmers and farmer producer companies get higher profits for crops like millets, moringa, etc. This motivates them to continue sustainable agriculture,” he says.

Satyabrath recently received a corporate excellence award from an organisation, presented by Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi.

(Malay Ray is a Rourkela-based journalist. He writes on social issues, human interest stories, startups, the environment, women empowerment and tribal life.)

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