Stellaps Technologies, a digital dairy supply chain solutions provider, has entered into milk procurement and begun purchasing milk for major brands such as ITC and CavinKare.
The company, which is developing a milk procurement network, also plans to provide dairy farmers with extension services such as feed, fertilizers, and supplements.
Stellaps has begun milk procurement operations in the Kolar area of Karnataka and Eastern Uttar Pradesh in recent months. ‘We have begun procurement in these two clusters and hope to establish 18 more in the next 12-18 months,’ said Ranjith Mukundan, CEO of Stellapps Technologies Pvt Ltd.
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‘We see Eastern India as a good market with few players,’ Mukundan said, adding that the company was expanding its procurement activities in the region. Stellapps currently purchases roughly 30,000 litres every day, with 18,000 litres coming from Eastern UP and the remainder from Kolar. In these two clusters, the business currently maintains around 400 milk procurement centres, each with at least 100 farmers actively pouring milk.
Mukundan said the idea behind the diversification strategy is to enable data-driven premium market linkages by becoming a demand fulfilment partner for consumer brands, sourcing high-quality assured milk and launching differentiated milk and milk-based products such as paneer, cheese, and flavoured milk, among other things.
Since 2011, Stellaps has provided a suite of technological solutions for automating the Indian dairy sector, including traceability, to over 250 customers, including all of the main private and cooperative dairies. For the projected diversification, it intends to use its existing pan-India footprint. ‘Every day, we digitise over 13.5 million litres of milk flow in over 36,000 villages, affecting over 3 million registered farmers,’ Mukundan added.
Stellaps is aiming to buy 1 million litres in the next 24 months and has begun onboarding personnel across the country. It is also nearing the completion of a multi-million dollar financing round to fund its diversification objectives over the next 18 months.
Stellapps, which was founded at IIT Madras, has raised approximately $20 million in funding from investors such as Omnivore, Gates Foundation, Qualcomm, ABB Ventures, WRVI Capital, Blume Ventures, and Venture Highway.
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According to Mukundan, Stellapps is building a supply chain to feed into the top twenty cities, and the suggested clusters would be closer to places like Coimbatore, Vizag, Jaipur, Pune, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Patna.
The business intends to lease the dairy processing units and has begun looking for potential locations around Mysore, Erode, Patna, and Lucknow. ‘We want to lease the processing units based on volume and run them according to our quality standards,’ he said.
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