India the largest producer of dairy in the world consumes 60% of its processed milk in fluid form. With the market value of INR 11,357 Bn in 2020, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.4% to reach INR 23,243 by 2026. Apart from state-owned or co-operative very few players have succeeded in breaking into the Indian markets.
In 2021, America’s leading dairy technology, services, and intelligence provider – Dairy.com marked its entry into the Indian industry by acquiring a 100% stake in Mr. Milkman to strengthen its integrated supply chain solution offerings for dairies worldwide.
Founded in 2017, Gurugram-based Mr. Milkman is a state-of-the-art SaaS-based supply chain platform that helps dairy companies in managing production and other operations. It empowers dairies to manage customer subscriptions and deliveries. From dairy farms to the customers’ glass, Mr. Milkman digitizes and optimizes the production with its tech-enabled, end-to-end solutions.
Mr. Milkman works with over 60+ Indian dairy brands, namely – Akshayakalpa, Mr. Milk, Whyte Farms, Abis Dairy, Carnival Group, Fortune Dairy, Binsar Farms, Nutrimoo, Healthways, and many others in India and helps them manage different aspects of dairy distribution, supply chain, customer subscription, and delivery requests through an integrated platform.
For Samarth Setia, CEO, Mr. Milkman, it started as a mobile application – a solution to help his local milkman organize his delivery operations and customer accounts and produce automated bills. This led to many milkmen using the app and a consumer-facing application for customers to place orders with these milkmen was launched by Samarth.
From serving the small milkmen they moved to large milk brands by building a full-fledged SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that not only organized and automated the customer management for large and small-scale dairies but also helped various dairies keep track of their operational processes by reporting sales anomalies and providing extensive reports. Regular upgrades in technology based on customer feedback ensure seamless milk and dairy product delivery from farm to the table.
Due to its sheer volume, Danone has been the most recent to shut shop here. Unlike Danone, Dairy.com plans to work with Indian dairy industry partners and help them with quality and supply chain management, manufacturing execution systems, dairy firm analytics, etc with information technology services and intelligence.
For the future, the plan is to optimize and digitize several areas of the agriculture supply chain in India, North America, and Europe. Dairy.com has extensive experience in multiple agribusiness areas and sectors, including first mile, plant operations, payments, quality control, risk management, and transportation, and employs over 200 people worldwide. Their presence in over five continents has allowed Mr. Milkman to expand and reach out to all of their clients and new clients in all those locations.
Dairy.com plans to continue operations under the same name; with an expansion of its current team. Dairy.com and Mr. Milkman together are well-positioned to thrive in India. Their solutions are ideally suited to successfully support the country’s exponential rise of eCommerce and its increasing consumer demand for convenience, value, food safety, ease of payment, and product variety from the industry. They are capable of offering the best of solutions from both worlds.
Dairy.com was founded 20 years ago. Well over half the milk in the United States, in some way, shape or form, is accounted for and tracked using their systems. The animals never stop making milk. With their India operation, they would have people on this side of the world at all times; it would be like a normal working day.
