Organic dairy player Akshayakalpa plans production clusters

Organic dairy player Akshayakalpa Farms and Foods Pvt Ltd is planning new production clusters in Telangana and Maharashtra as it gears up to cater to the markets of Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai. It also expects to start procurement from farmers in its production cluster in Chengalpattu from March to service Chennai market.

Akshayakalpa, which produces and sells organic milk and milk products through a network of certified farms, presently has two production clusters – one each in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In its Tiptur cluster in Karnataka, the start-up has 850 certified farms, where 9,500 animals are tagged and managed using the herd management system, while in the Chengalpattu cluster, there are about 300 farms with 1,800 animals.

“About three years ago we started creating a farmer cluster in Pooriyambakkam, in Chengalpattu and have been training about 300 farmers in the region. About 65 farms have been certified in October and we expect to start procurement operations in March to cater to the Chennai market,” Shashikumar, Co-Founder and CEO, Akshayakalpa, said.

Expansion plans

The company recently raised ₹117 crore from British International Investment, Rainmatter Foundation and Venture Dairy in B-Series funding, which it plans to utilise to expand its operations.

As part of its expansion plans, Akshayakalpa is also gearing up to tap the markets in Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai. “We are now looking at setting up a production clusters in the Krishna river belt near Kurnool to supply to Hyderabad market and between Pune and Mumbai to service these two cities,” he said.

Akshayakalpa has been marketing its organic milk and value added products in the three urban markets of Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. The company has clocked a monthly sales of Rs 18 crore from these three markets. “We have clocked a 40 per cent growth in topline from April till now, this year over same period last year,” he said.

Of the daily production volumes of of 75,000 litres, about 45,000 litres are sold in Bengaluru, another 3,500 litres in Chennai and 2,500 in Hyderabad. The company also produces about 10,000 kg of curd and other value-added products like paneer and cheese, ghee, buttermilk and yogurt, among others. All these three markets are serviced by the milk produced from its certified farms in the Tiptur cluster, where it has a processing unit.

Akshayakalpa is also investing in a processing infrastructure in Chengalpattu and has leased out a facility as it looks to aggressively expand in the Chennai market, where it has created some brand awareness and visibility in the past three years. “We have built a very robust pipeline of around 1,500 farms over the past 12 years, which are certified slowly and we are linking them to market gradually,” he said.