Tasty Dairy MOO’ving up the Dairy Skills in India

If you thought that all the action in milk business was concentrated around the government backed cooperatives such as GCMMF, NDDB you could not be right anymore. The milk and dairy product categories from private players have been seeing some of the most frenetic activity over the past few years. Multinational and Indian corporate giants have jumped into the market.  New start-ups have cropped up. Fund raising is taking place at a frenzied pace, both from the equity markets and via private equity funding. And new products and innovations are being launched fast and furious. Meanwhile, the Rs 332 crore Tasty Dairy Specialities Ltd, Kanpur based fast emerging BSE SME listed dairy company is aggressively improving the dairy skill sets of farmers and other stakeholders in Uttar Pradesh through a self-sustaining social-business model.  The Company has recently set up INDUCED (Indo Dutch Centre of Excellence on Dairying), an organization born out of an MOU between Tasty Dairy Specialities Limited and PUM Netherlands Senior Experts.

INDUCED through education, training & counseling services is introducing the latest dairying international concepts, technology to the milk farmers and helping them enrich their dairying skills with the purpose of enhancing quality, quantity of milk, farmer’s income and ensure organized growth of dairying in India.

INDUCED through a series of training programs such as “’MOO’ving towards Dairying” which has been designed to benefit Dairy Entrepreneurs, Dairy Scholars & Professionals, Dairy Farm Owners & Managers, Agri NGO Volunteers and Dairy Farmers has so far trained over 300 participants from across India and has set an ambitious mission of educating and training over 1000 dairy farmers in the next few years.

Mr Atul Mehra- a first generation entrepreneur, who founded Tasty Dairy Specialities in 1992, says “ As the dairy consumption is all set to go up significantly in India, the market needs to  become extremely organized and attractive to budding dairy professionals, entrepreneurs, dairy farmers and workers. We at the INDUCED are trying to bridge the knowledge gap between unorganized and organized dairying by educating, training and introducing various new International concepts and technology to the dairy farmers and other stakeholders for transformation and growth”

In a big and fast growing country like India the farmers need to be skilled in a wide range of areas to run profitable and sustainable dairy farming. Managing a dairy farm is so much more than just overseeing the milking process. In a new India Dairy farming has to become highly technology and skill driven and contribute greatly to the rural economy. Due to environmental issues and demand for increased productivity and efficiency, farmers need to make many changes to their dairying and farm management practices, including soil testing, fodder conservation, supplementary feeding, improved animal genetics, artificial insemination programs, the use of new milking technology, and use of computers to record and monitor cattle performance. These changes create the need for a more highly trained, qualified and skilled dairy farming workforce.

Previously Tasty Diary for many years focused on developing the knowledge and skills of street vendors of food products. The company has now shifted its focus to working for the growth of dairy farming in India and has roped in PUM Netherlands to work with the company in building a roadmap to sustainable development of dairy sector. We are happy that our Indo-Dutch collaboration under INDUCED in short span of time has established a centre of excellence in dairying which is working towards the growth of the Indian dairy sector by enriching the knowledge and skills of dairy farmers and aiding dairy farms become sustainable and profitable.

The main objectives of this unique initiative is to enhance skill sets of small scale dairy farmers, fully train around 100 medium sized dairy farmers per year, establishing a medium size model dairy farm, which could be used for training farmers and field workers and enhancing the performance of the dairy plant by increasing efficiency and diversifying product lines” Mr Mehra added

Although India is the world’s largest dairy producer and consumer, yet its per capita consumption is a third of the US, while milk productivity per cattle is also low. Besides, Indian dairy farm size and average cattle per farm is low compared to global standards. At the same time, Indian dairy farms produce a lot of wastage and spoilage of milk at the farm level. Milk yield per animal in India is 6-7 litres compared to over 35 litres in other countries. The country also lacks proper cold chain from farm to factory, while there are too many middlemen involved, which reduces the ultimate yield to farmers.

Tasty Dairy Specialities which is one of the leading players in the industry, handling manufacturing of milk and milk based products and has been providing direct and indirect employment to thousands of people in and around Kanpur is confident of transforming the dairy sector in collaboration with PUM Netherlands Funded by the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs. PUM Netherlands has a global footprint. It supports sustainable development of small and medium size enterprises in developing and emerging markets. PUM has assisted over 40,000 organisations in about three dozen countries.