Initially started as a dairy farm, the company started the Kiaro brand about 18 months ago and is already available in four cities. The startup comes as a breadth of fresh air in a market which is unorganised, unhygienic, labour-intensive and low returns based.
It is not very often we come across a young and enthusiastic entrepreneur who wants to make a difference in the dairy sector along with providing nutritious and healthy product. With this idea in mind, Sharat Chandra Reddy Gattu started working on building a company and in a span of four years he has started Kiaro that is into the production of nutritious and healthy milk and milk-based products.
Initially started as a dairy farm, the company started the Kiaro brand about 18 months ago and is already available in four cities. The startup comes as a breadth of fresh air in a market which is unorganised, unhygienic, labour-intensive and low returns based.
“Most of the dairy farmers today are not only dairy farmers but are agri-based farmers and this makes the dairy sector to be more labour intensive than capital intensive. Cows are bought only for milking purpose and are sold off in summer, thus making the whole procedure of milking cows very inconsistent and unhygienic. While on the one hand, the per capita consumption is increasing by about 8 to 9 per cent in India annually, the farmer productivity has not improved much in the last 10-15 years. Keeping all this in mind, we started Kiaro to provide hygienic milk to consumers but also to improve the living standards of farmers,” says Gattu.
Working of the startup is very simple, it procures maize crop to feed cows from local agriculture farmers at an early phase which increases their farm earnings. And this crop is highly nutritious for the cows as well and this leads to more nutritious milk. On the other hand, Kiaro has partnered with four large dairy farms that have about 500-600 cows per farm and they milk the cows in a mechanized and automated manner. After the milking of the cow, the milk is immediately tested for antibiotics, hormones and kept in seven cold storage trucks that are owned by Kiaro, thus retaining milk’s natural nutrients.
In the milk category, Kiaro has two variants – direct farm fresh milk and low fat milk – and it has products in curd, paneer, smoothies, yogurt and chocolate milk. “All these products will be launched in the next few months and all of them very different and more nutritious from the products that are available in the market. In our yogurt and smoothies we add real fruits unlike flavoured ones available in the market,” Gattu informs.
With about 4,000 deliveries in Hyderabad and Bengaluru and presence in 250 retail stores, Kiaro now plans to focus more on the retail segment to grow its brand. In the next one year it plans to get into 500 retail stores in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune and Mumbai. It is also aiming at 10x growth with its expansion and it has seen 150 per cent growth only in March due to its retail presence.
Kiaro has raised Rs 4.5 crore this year from US-based investors and is confident of sustaining and growing its business with the money. Going ahead, it plans to also get into bakery segment by launching modern deserts that are filled with nutrition and health, says Gattu.
“Our goal is to improve economics of dairy farms along with providing nutritious products,” he ends. #KhabarLive