Hyderabad-based-bootstrapped dairy company Sid’s Farm plans to raise capital of up to Rs 25 crore in the next 4-6 months; This fund will support its new product development and expand to other cities in India.
The company will invest in setting up a new facility to enhance capacity and adding more products to its portfolio; working along with dairy farmers, expanding to other cities and strengthening its marketing efforts. The company has so far invested about Rs 5 crore in its operations.
Sid’s Farm has been adhering to norms of testing milk for antibiotics, hormones and preservatives. They carry out tests daily to look for any adulteration in milk, and the tested milk is then pasteurised, chilled and delivered directly to the customer. Sid’s Farm was founded in 2013 by Dr Kishore Indukuri, an IIT Kharagpur and University of Massachusetts alumni. After a six-year stint at Intel Corporation in the USA, he decided to return to Hyderabad and was keen to start his entrepreneurial venture. He saw a huge opportunity in pure and unadulterated milk in Hyderabad and started activity with a small herd of 20 cattle and began supplying milk directly to customers. Currently, the company serves about 10,000 customers daily, on a subscription basis.
Dr Kishore Indukuri, founder, Sid’s Farm, told Telangana Today, “Hyderabad is a major market for us. We are exploring other towns and cities in Telangana to expand our operations. They are also making investments in milk chilling centres. We have been complying with all the regulations and have gone for all key national certifications. We will also seek international certifications in future.”
Value chain
Spread over 2.5 acres of land, the company has a 4,000 sq ft milk processing facility along with a dairy farm in another 1.5 acres of land. It also conducts extension and training activities for farmers at its Shabad, Ranga Reddy district. He added, currently Sid’s Farm produces 17,000 litres of milk and milk products daily and delivers it direct to customers, agents and B2B retail partners such as bbdaily (bigbasket), Supr Daily, Milkbasket, Qubag and others. The company has been working with online partners over the last three years.
“Almost 95 per cent of our sales today is online and only five per cent is offline. Post Covid scenario, we will expand our presence into physical stores. We have 12 products and once we expand our portfolio further, we will explore opportunities to create physical stores be it own or through franchisee route. We will see some progress in this direction in the next six months,” Indukuri informed.
Sid’s Farm employs 240 people directly and indirectly and impacts about 1,500 farmers (involving over 7,500 cattle) directly by educating them on the best practices of herd maintenance, by timely procurement thus avoiding economic losses to farmers, by providing them access to good quality feed/fodder and extension services such as veterinary care. The company has also partnered with BAIF Development Research Foundation.
Source : Telangana Today June 13th 2021