Vaishno Devi Dairy aims Rs 250 crore of revenue next year

Gujarat may be known for initiating the milk revolution in the country, but today Maharashtra has become one of the major milk producing state due to several fervent entrepreneurial dairies like Vaishno Devi Dairy, Chitale Dairy, Parag Milk Foods etc.

The late Verghese Kurien, the man responsible for Operation Flood, the world's biggest agricultural development program transformed India from milk deficient nation to the largest milk producer in the world. His vision has spawned many entrepreneurs who hope to focus on India's agrarian economy.

Spotting this opportunity 37 year old Nandkishore Attal founded Pune-based proprietorship firm Vaishno Devi Dairy Products in 2007 with an initial capital of Rs 50 lakh. Serving under the brand Shubhi, the venture produces 3 lakh litres of milk every single day. The company is also operating a 20 tonne/day milk powder plant supplying to clients like Mother Dairy, Hatsun Agro Products and many more.

With plans to expand both the production capacity and the product range Vaishno Devi Dairy is aiming to get revenue of Rs 250 crore by next year from current Rs 150 crore.

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Entrepreneurs Nandkishore Attal's first chapter of his dairy diaries began in 2003 when he ventured into the milk business with his childhood friend and co-founded Vaishno Devi Milk Product. It was not until 2007 that Attal decided to fly solo. He set up his second venture in the agriculture space, Vaishno Devi Dairy Products. What started with the acquisition of a dairy unit with a capacity of 70,000 litres is today processing 300,000 litres of milk everyday and has skimmed its way into procuring, pasteurising, chilling and packaging milk.

Attal has also expanded operations to two plants in Pune where he manufactured condensed milk, skimmed milk powder, butter, cottage cheese and curd under the Shubi label. But venturing into a Greenfield project was not easy.

”In dairy industry the challenges are in terms of procurement and in terms of sales and marketing. Both the ends we are setting up our network wherein we will be having 15 chilling centres in next one-one and half year. Each chilling centre will be able to procure around 15,000-20,000 litres of milk directly from farmers,” Attal said.

Dairy being a highly capital intensive business some of the hurdles Nandkishore faced were raising funds from banks in the early stages. Starting up with a personal saving of Rs 5,000,000 it was only in 2010 that the venture raised project finance of Rs 10 crore from State Bank of India (SBI).

Today Vaishno Devi Dairy Projects is associated with over 10,000 dairy farmers in Maharashtra and procures milk from them at a standard price of Rs 70/litre determined by the Maharashtra government.

Claiming to be profitable since inception apart from the in-house brand Shubhi the venture today is milching revenues by co-packing for organisations like Mother Dairy and Britannia and is now exploring other institutional consumers. Betting big on the dairy market Nandkishore expects to touch revenues of Rs 250 crore by next year.

“As it is India is the highest producer of milk and by 2020 the milk per capita consumption would be around 300-250 ml per person. So I think there is a huge scope for new entrants like us in this industry,” Attal said.

Having already achieved his mission of growing 100 percent Year-on-Year, Nandkishore is now on his next mission to give back to the community he works with.

Vaisho Devi Dairy Products provides medical facilities, veterinary services, cattle feed at no profit, no loss rates to almost 2,000 farmers who directly work for the venture. Going forward he plans on installing plants with additional capacity of 30 tonnes/day as compared to the current capacity of 20 tonnes.

Also in the pipeline are plans to set up dairy products manufacturing plants in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Nandkishore is hopeful of making Vaishno Devi Dairy Products one of the top five private dairies in Maharashtra by 2015.