Know your Milk

Milk is one food product that acts as a unified source of multiple nutrients, for anyone from a baby to a senior citizen. India produces more than 200 million tonnes of milk every year (Source). However, adulteration is a huge problem. Poor milk quality directly impacts health of millions of people. Kishore Indukuri sensed an opportunity, and started Sid’s Farm to serve us with pure, unadulterated milk. ?

Comfortable job? – Yes. Comfortable within? - No

Kishore’s life was set. With a degree from IIT Kharagpur and University of Massachusetts, he was earning enough at a prestigious MNC firm in USA. However, deep inside he wanted to contribute to a social cause. With his previous generations into agriculture, he identified this space as his Karma Bhumi, and returned to India.

While he was undecided on area within agriculture to focus on, he realized the quantum of adulteration problem in milk in India, when he started searching for good quality milk for his son Siddharth. A deep dive made him realize that our milk is adulterated with items such as urea, glucose, sugar, cheap salt, caustic soda, and baking soda. All of them make the milk thick, but are a disaster for our health.

All this made Kishore restless. He promised his son that he will serve best quality milk to Indians. It gave birth to Sid’s Farm in Hyderabad in 2016.

Quality at the forefront

Sid’s farm carries out 6500+ tests daily to check for any adulteration in milk, presence of thickeners/ preservatives. The milk undergoes physical, chemical, and microbiological testing. They also ensure milk procured from sick cattle doesn’t reach our glass. The tested milk is then pasteurized, chilled and delivered directly to the customer. The approach of chilling at source helps retain the freshness, and gives the milk a shelf life of upto 10 days, against the usual shelf life of 1 day. ?

Sid’s farm currently works with 2200 farmers and delivers 27000+ litres of best in class milk in Hyderabad daily. Their products include whole cow’s milk, whole buffalo’s milk, skim milk, double toned buffalo milk, cow’s butter, cow’s ghee, buffalo’s butter, buffalo’s ghee, cow’s curd, buffalo’s curd, and natural paneer. They plan to make this purity accessible to more people, by expanding to other cities in future.

Banking had to show equal care

Sid’s farm believes the total addressable market for them is 3 lakh litres in Hyderabad alone (10% of total market). To grow fast, it needed a dynamic banking partner. HSBC fitted in well. HSBC deeply understood their business and extended enhancement in the credit lines at attractive rates. As a result, Sid’s Farm was able to meet the demands through timely payments to the Farmers, and helped them fund the strengthening of their supply chain.

For Sid’s farm, seamless payments to farmers is a must. Through HSBCnet, HSBC’s award winning digital platforms, they processed farmer payments in bulk. This ensured there are no leaks or errors or delays in paying the right amounts to farmers. The earlier system of cash and cheque payments was erased.

Sid’s Farm have also been expanding in retail stores to serve 15,000+ active retail customers. Here payment collections was one of the challenges. Through HSBC’s UPI collection solution and integration with the HSBC bank account, Sid’s Farm could collect quickly and efficiently. This helped Sid’s Farm in better inventory management and reconciliation across stores.

Says Kishore, ‘With Sid’s farm we are trying to bring in a revolution in the country through integrated agriculture. Our business is very dynamic and HSBC has been a big enabler for us. The team is always accessible, and very pro-active in offering us best in class solutions. We look forward to our collaboration with HSBC in the long run’

Says Prakash Jaiswal, MD and Country head (MSME and startup), ‘We never notice the harmful things we consume when we drink milk. Sid’s Farm is doing an exceptional work in ensuring we drink healthier. We cherish our relationship with them, and will do everything possible to help boost their noble work’

Every startup is trying to make our world a better place to live in. HSBC has a dedicated startup team to cater to diverse needs of startups. We would be happy to understand your business and needs, and offer you best in class solutions.

Let’s become healthier.

(With inputs from Prashanth Kamath & Tushar Kant, Sid farm’s Relationship managers, Shekhar Lele, Business Innovation Lead, Devesh Solanki, Implementation Manager, HSBC India)

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