India is a developing country where agricultural and dairy industries provide a living for the majority of the population. India produces more milk than any other country in the world. As of 2019, annual production was 187 million tonnes. Milk production accounted for over 4.2 percent of India’s gross domestic product in 2020.
Many organisations are coming up with new strategies to take advantage of India’s current dairy position and improve it even further by utilising new technological resources and providing training to the population in order to make them more skilled and technically advanced.
India is the world’s leading producer of dairy products, but it still fails to meet food safety and security criteria for milk. This is due to the lack of expertise and resources available to those who operate in the dairy industry. As a result, many new businesses are springing up with the goal of developing a business plan that will manufacture dairy products that match industry standards and can be sold profitably.
Let’s take a look at some of the leading dairy startups in India that are transforming the dairy industry in India.
The company was started by Chakradhar Ghade and Nitin Kaushal, in 2015. Country Delight delivers fresh, organic milk to the customers’ doorstep. The milk can be ordered through their mobile application and not just milk but different types of dairy products like curd, ghee, etc and different other staple foods can be ordered through the application.
2. Stellapps
Stellapps Website
Ranjith Mukundan, Praveen Nale, Ramkrishna Adukuri, and Venkatesh Seshayee established Stellapps in 2011. Stellapps is a firm that digitises dairy products from farm to consumer. The startup employs the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and database management, among other technologies, to improve dairy distribution network features such as milk yield, milk purchasing, logistics system, animal insurance, and many other things.
3. Happy Milk
Happy Milk Website
Mehal Kejriwal co-founded Happy Milk in December 2017. The company has its very own farm on the outskirts of Bangalore with roughly 400 cattle. Happy Milk caters to individual clients as well as businesses such as Nature’s Basket and Foodhall. It also accepts large orders. Customers can also make a subscription which is available via apps such as DailyNinja, Doodhwala, and Amazon Prime Now.
4. Klimom
Klimom Website
Klimom is well-known for delivering fresh dairy products directly from the farm to clients’ doors. All of the milk products are created from Gir cow’s milk and are of the highest quality. The farms are located at Sangareddy, Hyderabad. The company claims to have bred Gir cows exclusively, and the fodder is grown on the farm as well. The cows are milked by hand, and the calves are fed completely before the cows are milked.
5. The Milk India Company
The company was founded by Shilpi Sinha in 2018. Milk India company aims to provide clean, fresh and nutritious cow milk to the client’s doorstep. The Milk India Company delivers unprocessed, unpasteurised milk to the customers daily. The company is certified by the National Dairy Research Institute of India. The Milk India Company delivers cow milk in glass bottles to customers’ doorsteps every morning, making it environmentally sustainable.
6. Milk Mantra
Milk Mantra Website
Based in Odisha, the company was founded in 2009 by Srikumar Misra. Milk Mantra began operations in 2012 and has made significant progress in reducing the state’s milk scarcity since then. Apart from milk, the company produces and sells a variety of dairy products such as ghee, curd, and cheese, as well as flavoured milkshakes under the Milky Moo and Mooshake brands.
7. Whyte Farms
Whyte Farms Website
Kanika Yadav and Sanjeev Yadav founded the company in 2015 with the goal of supplying healthy and clean cow’s milk. The Delhi-based startup, Whyte Farms provides pasteurised milk in glass bottles to roughly 3,000 families. The business is based on a 30-acre farm in Tijara, around 90 kilometres from Delhi.
8. Puresh Daily
Puresh Daily Website
Puresh Daily was formed in 2019 by IIM graduate Manish Piyush and his childhood friend Aditya Kumar and is based in Jharkhand. The vision of this company is to provide chemical-free pure milk to the population. The company provides its services through its mobile application, where people can find the subscription plan that suits their needs. Due to milk’s health benefits and being a staple in the Indian diet, the company experienced a 100 percent growth during the COVID-19 lockdown.
9. Matratva Dairy
Matratva Dairy Website
Based in Ajmer, Rajasthan, Matratva Dairy was founded in 2014, the company was founded by Ankita Kumawat, Lokesh Gupta, and Phool Chand Kumawat. The main products of the company are milk and ghee. All the dairy products are prepared by using traditional methods and minimum use of machinery or technology. Matratva Dairy will offer its products through e-commerce platforms like Amazon and BigBasket with rebranding under Goratan Products Pvt. Ltd.
10. Milkbasket
Milkbasket Website
Milkbasket is a grocery delivery service that operates on a daily basis. It was founded by Ashish Goel, Yatish Talavdia, Anant Goel, and Anurag Jain in 2015. The name ‘Milkbasket’ comes from the fact that milk entices buyers to buy other items as well. The company brings milk and other necessities to the customer’s doorstep.
Milk is a vital and necessary component of a healthy diet. It provides the body with all of the critical nutrients it requires. India has the greatest milk production and consumption rates. Many startups have formed to improve the country’s dairy production by introducing innovative technologies and providing training to locals, thereby enhancing the business and creating an environmentally friendly industry without injuring the animals and obtaining the highest potential milk yield.
FAQs
Which is the best dairy company in India?
Parag Milk Foods Ltd, Nandini, Dudhsagar Dairy, and Mother Dairy are some of the leading dairy companies in India.
Is dairy profitable in India?
Yes, the Dairy business is one of the most in-demand and profitable businesses in India.
Which state is the largest producer of milk in India?
Uttar Pradesh is India’s most milk-producing state, accounting for roughly 18% of the country’s total milk production.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Milkbasket.
With a rising number of startups and the presence of many existing players in the industry, the customer acceptance of home delivery services is growing leaps and bounds. Living in the current era, we are surrounded by an increasing number of eCommerce platforms that offer almost everything and deliver all of these things right at our doorsteps.
It is true that most of our daily needs are satisfied by the old and the newer players that are dominating the home delivery services, but for some of our daily needs, which are always in demand, like fresh milk, groceries, we often find a crunch, even if it is for a specific product. This is why many startups have solely dedicated their businesses to meet the growing requirements, thereby aiming to achieve a demand-supply equilibrium. One such startup that aims to take care of the fresh supply of milk and more is Milkbasket.
Milkbasket is a subscription-based micro-delivery service that provides customers with the regular dairy necessities and household needs each morning. Within the first six months of its launch, Milkbasket claimed to have shipped 30 million orders.
Founded by Anant Goel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, and Yatish Talavdia in 2015, Milkbasket is a Haryana-based company that is currently owned and operated by Reliance Industries, when the latter acquired 96.49% stakes in Aaidea Solutions Private Limited Milkbasket parent in October 2021.
Know more about Milkbasket’s startup story, business model, funding, revenue, growth, and more in the article ahead!
October 23, 2021 –Reliance Industries’ subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd completes the acquisition of Milkbasket by acquiring 96.49% stakes in the company.
August 28, 2021 – Milkbasket, a daily grocery delivery app, has advanced its bid to go public in the second half of 2021, boosted by solid market growth in recent months despite the pandemic, according to a top company executive.
“Milkbasket has a near-perfect record of reaching growth targets since being founded in 2015. The rapid adoption of at-home grocery delivery amongst consumers due to the pandemic has provided us with an impetus to target IPO in just a year, which we had initially planned for the year 2023,” Anant Goel (Milkbasket co-founder and CEO) said.
About Milkbasket and How it Works?
Milkbasket is a Gurugram-based company that creates an online grocery network to meet consumers’ everyday household needs.
The company provides a simple delivery system that delivers milk, bread, eggs, butter, juices, and other everyday necessities and basic dairy amenities to users’ doorsteps every morning. The platform also allows them to keep track of daily expenditures, schedule vacation time off, and easily build repeat orders every day.
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a huge growth opportunity for the online grocery delivery sector, which predicted that India’s online grocery market could reach $3 billion in 2020, up from $1.7 billion in 2019. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 37.1% from 2021 to 2028. The industry was valued at USD 2.9 billion in 2020. It has gained tremendous traction since 2020.
Milkbasket – Name, Logo and Tagline
‘Milkbasket’ as the name suggests, was a milk delivery startup initially but later on decided to come up with a simple delivery system that delivers milk, bread, eggs, butter, juices, and other everyday necessities and basic dairy amenities to users’.
Milkbasket Logo
Milkbasket – Founders and Team
Milkbasket was founded by Anant Goel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, and Yatish Talavdia in 2015.
Milkbasket’s Founders
Anant Goel
Anant V Goel was the founder and CEO of Milkbasket. Goel was a B.tech, Civil Engineering student of NIT Kurukshetra, after which he visited The Wharton School and INSEAD to complete MBA exchange and MBA, Strategy and Operations, Corporate Finance programs. Goel started his career at Tata Consultancy Services where he worked as a Project Leader and then went to Capgemini to join the company as a Sr. Strategy and Transformation Consultant. Goel then became the CEO and Managing Partner of UrSqft before founding Milkbasket and becoming its CEO. Gallup Consulting was another company where Anant Goel worked as an Associate Partner. Goel exited the company and stepped down from the CEO designation on August 23, 2021, after Milkbasket was acquired by Reliance Industries.
Milkbasket Founder and former CEO Anant Goel is all set to launch his new startup that will be based on the fruits and vegetable segment. It would be a consumer-centric platform that will delivery the fresh produce from farmers to the consumers, as per the sources close to the company and to the matter, reported on February 15, 2022.
Anurag Jain
Anurag Jain has been a co-founder of Milkbasket.com. He was also an alumnus of NIT Kurukshetra from where he completed a B.Tech degree in Civil Engineering. Jain later successfully pursued a PGDBM in Operations Management and Supervision from XLRI Jamshedpur. Anurag became a co-founder of Milkbasket after serving managerial roles in several companies like Spencer’s Retail, Cinepolis India, TPG Wholesale, and Samsung India.
Ashish Goel
Ashish Goel served as the Co-founder and CTO/CPO of Milkbasket. A Mechanical Engineering student of Delhi College of Engineering, Ashish co-founded two companies – Zamoona and UrSqFt before co-founding Milkbasket in 2015. Ashish Goel is currently serving as the CTO of ZipLoan after leaving Milkbasket in January 2021.
Yatish Talvadia
Yatish is currently hailed as the present CEO of Milkbasket after Anant exited the company. Talvadia has a Masters’ degree in Engineering/Industrial Management from Manipal Institute of Technology. Yatish was the Sr. Lecturer of JECRC and later served as a Core Team Member of Zamoona before co-founding Milkbasket with the 3 other founders of the company.
Milkbasket – Startup Story
Ashish Goel availed of the ‘Milk and More’ service to deliver groceries and daily necessities to his home when he was in the U.K. This made Anant realize that India also needs one such service. However, entering around that time when the market was already being dominated by successful players like Grofers, Big Basket, LocalBaniya, and Peppertap, Milkbasket had only one intention, which is to stand as an alternative to the mom-and-pop stores of every Indian neighborhood.
Milkbasket founders started in 2015 when they first set up a stall in an apartment complex in Gurugram. The founders soon got the first paying customer, who installed the app. The founding team of Milkbasket initially started to deliver milk by themselves, in their personal car. With the increasing demands, they eventually had to hire an autorickshaw to deliver it. The order volume further increased, which made Milkbasket partner with corporates and automotive companies and ultimately set up their own delivery fleet.
Milkbasket started off with just 22 customers in April 2015, and by the end of June of the same year, the team saw a growth of 30,000+ customers, and that too only in Gurugram. Ashish and Anant started with their initial capital seed of 50 Lacs.
Milkbasket – Vision and Mission
The company’s mission is to become the default mom and pop shop for over a million households. Milkbasket is by far the most cost-efficient model in the online grocery space as compared to its domestic and global competitors, accomplishing positive unit economics within about six months of launch. This is perhaps why the company has been acquired by Reliance.
Milkbasket is a hyperlocal e-commerce company that believes in an inventory-based model where it sources its products directly from brands. Milkbasket co-founder Anant Goel believes that his company has developed a contactless hyper-local grocery delivery model. Customers can place orders before midnight and have them shipped by 7 a.m., according to Milkbasket.
The e-grocery delivery startup doesn’t need checkout or payment because the purchase is prepaid with the help of a mobile wallet that is on the app. Therefore, the users can simply top it up whenever they run out of funds. Milkbasket earns from its delivery charges, subscriptions, and commissions from each transaction.
Milkbasket – Revenue and Growth
Milkbasket, a hyperlocal distribution startup based in Gurugram, announced a 3.8X increase in revenue in 2020, which ended in March last year, with only a small increase in losses. In 2020, the company reported revenue of INR 322 crore, of which 99.9% (INR 321.7 crore) came from operations.
In 2020, the hyperlocal startup’s expenses rose at the same pace, to INR 337.7 Cr, bringing its losses to INR 15.7 Cr. In 2019, the company posted revenue of INR 84.6 Cr and expenses of INR 94.1 Cr, resulting in a loss of INR 9.5 Cr. Over the same time frame, it received around 99.7% (INR 84.4 Cr) from its operations.
Milkbasket is based on the habit of people residing in India, of having milk delivered to one’s doorstep every morning, and the company only delivers during one delivery slot, from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. By October 2017 they had delivered around 1.5 million orders and employed around 200 people.
Milkbasket had earlier displayed an annual sales run rate of around USD 100 million, delivering over 9,000 items across FMCG, dairy, fruits, and vegetable categories in Indian cities including Hyderabad, Dwarka, Delhi, Bengaluru, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, and Noida).
MbBulk and senior citizens-only helplines were also introduced in several cities to help people stay on lockdown without having to go out for groceries and dairy products. Within the first six months of its launch, Milkbasket successfully shipped around 30 million orders and achieved positive unit economics.
The company has been in high demand since the lockdown began, as demand for hyperlocal grocery delivery has increased dramatically. During the lockdown, many companies with a logistics and distribution backbone, such as Swiggy and Zomato, switched to grocery delivery as these were the only essentials in demand across the board.
Over the course of 11 rounds of funding, Milkbasket has raised total funding of $78.5 million. Milkbasket’s Investors’ include InnoVen Capital, Inflection Point Ventures, Mayfield Capital, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures among others.
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
Oct 23, 2021
–
$40M
Reliance Retail
May 13, 2020
Series B
$5.5M
Inflection Point Ventures
Jun 27, 2019
Debt Financing
₹150M
InnoVen Capital
Jun 4, 2019
Series B
$10.5M
Unilever Ventures
Dec 19, 2018
Series A
$7M
Mayfield Fund
Nov 12, 2018
Series A
$100M
Mayfield Fund
May 22, 2018
Series A
$7M
Kalaari Capital
Jan 23, 2018
Seed Round
$3M
Unilever Ventures
Aug 23, 2017
Seed Round
$840.9K
Blume Ventures, Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group (LCIG)
Dec 1, 2016
Seed Round
$634.9K
—
Apr 26, 2016
Seed Round
$500K
EVC Ventures
Milkbasket – Competitors
The top competitors in Milkbasket’s competitive set are –
Though Milkbasket initially started fine with the capital pool from the founders, the app has faced money crunches in regular intervals, which has been one of the major challenges of the company. Milkbasket was ultimately acquired by Reliance Retail and two senior executives of Reliance Industries Limited – Nikhil K Chakrapani, CFO of Reliance Retail and Rajendra Kamath, CFO of Reliance Content Management have joined the board of directors of Milkbasket as additional directors.
Milkbasket – Future Plans
According to a top company executive, Milkbasket has advanced its intention to pursue an initial public offering by the second half of 2021, boosted by solid market growth in recent months despite the pandemic. The widespread adoption of at-home delivery services among shoppers during the coronavirus disease outbreak, according to Anant Goel, has opened an opportunity to target an IPO in less than a year.
“Milkbasket has a near-perfect record of reaching growth targets since being founded in 2015. The rapid adoption of at-home grocery delivery amongst consumers due to the pandemic has provided us with an impetus to target IPO in just a year, which we had initially planned for the year 2023,” he said.
However, the company didn’t manage to go public till now. Milkbasket is currently looking forward to expanding its range of offerings and is looking for profitability after being taken over by Reliance. The company is also deemed to be a part of the Reliance super app.
The company provides a simple delivery system that delivers milk, bread, eggs, butter, juices, and other everyday necessities and basic dairy amenities to users’ doorsteps every morning.
Who founded Milkbasket?
Milkbasket was founded by Anant Goel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel and Yatish Talavdia in 2015.
What companies do Milkbasket compete with?
The top competitors in Milkbasket’s competitive set are Supr Daily, DailyNinja, BB Daily, Town Essentials, Amshop, RainCan, ZopSmart, PepperTap, Big Basket, Grofers, Dunzo, Zomato and Swiggy.
Startups fail and the reasons are many. While everyone loves to hear about success stories, it’s the failures that teach a greater lesson. Bangalore based ‘Doodhwala’, a promising startup delivering fresh milk and groceries direct to doorstep, recently stopped operations and the news has concerned the startup community. However, the reason for the shut down is not known yet. As communicated by the founders of ‘Doodhwala’, ‘FreshToHome’—another Bangalore based startup delivering meat and sea food—will now serve the subscribers of ‘Doodhwala’ in Bangalore. While we are still figuring out what could be the reason behind the wind up, lets have a look at Doodhwala’s journey.
Founded in 2015, Doodhwala was the first in Bangalore to bring fresh farm milk directly to customers. Besides Bangalore, Doodhwala operated in Hyderabad and Pune. The startup delivered milk, fresh dairy products, groceries, fruits, and other fresh daily essentials direct to home.
Doodhwala was launched with the vision to be the largest and most loved fresh milk & daily essentials delivery service across India, taking pride in excellent customer service and enhancing India’s disorganized milk delivery network, employee satisfaction, and return on investment.
Doodhwala shut down
Doodhwala – Founders and Team
Doodhwala – Founders
Ebrahim Akbari and Aakash Agrawal founded Doodhwala in 2015.
EbrahimAkbari, is an engineer by training, a serial entrepreneur by profession, and a marketer by passion. Along with his co-founder, he scaled Doodhwala from a 5 member team to a 400 member company in just three years, making Doodhwala India’s largest subscription-based e-grocer. Ebrahim leads Doodhwala’s growth and geo expansion. He brings on board a unique perspective on business strategies combined with rich experience of effectively deploying business resources. A savvy negotiator with inherent entrepreneurial skills, he understands the entire supply chain industry and has co-founded a business model that has revolutionized the way people in India are buying milk and local dairies are selling milk.
Prior to establishing Doodhwala, Ebrahim Akbari was heading a 20-year-old family business of Industrial Field Supplies in Oman. As a Managing Partner, his focus was on scaling the business across and outside Oman along with looking for new growth areas and markets. Within a year of Akbari’s leadership, the company’s turnover increased by 30% and geo-expansion in Dubai proved to be a profitable move within the first year of operations.
Ebrahim, is a skilled theatre artist, an avid reader, and a gold medalist swimmer. A regular speaker at industry forums and platforms, Ebrahim recently spoke at the VCC Food and AgriSummit and The National Food Processing Conclave, in New Delhi.
Aakash Agrawal has a proven track record of successfully leading a company’s operations and sales. He previously co-started a steel fabrication company, UPPL, in 2010 in Odhisa where he drove operations and infrastructure implementation. Under his leadership, the firm within 5 years of successful operations clocked INR 20 crore of turnover, and won the ‘Vendor of The Year’. Post Aakash’s exit, UPPL is one of the very few board run SMEs in India catering to the heavy engineering industry.
Aakash spearheads the logistics and operations of Doodhwala. He possesses an entrepreneurial mindset, employing strong team leadership to create an outsized impact with limited resources. With rich and multi-functional expertise, Aakash has created competitive advantages in key operational areas for Doodhwala and developed a cost-effective omni-channel distribution/logistics network.
A great believer in the saying, ‘we will either find a way or make one’, Aakash spends much of his spare time reading about politics, history, current affairs, and traveling around the world.
Within three years, Doodhwala grew from two people to an organization of 1000 people.
One late night in 2014, Aakash and Ebrahim were working on a different business project, working and munching on cereal with milk. They realized that there was no milk for the second serving of cereals. This left them wondering how life would have been easier if there had been an app for ordering milk. Soon they grasped that they unknowingly stumbled upon a great business idea which was too exciting to let them sleep.
They wanted to immediately check the feasibility of this idea, and so around 4 in the morning, they were out and about to see how the milk supply market actually worked. This was followed by weeks of research and surveys and finally, they launched a beta version to test the market. They were amazed at the response they received. Consumers loved the idea of hassle-free home delivery of milk. They were looking for a new age ‘Doodhwala’ (milkman in Hindi), and this laid the foundation of Doodhwala.
Consumers were looking for better ways to find good quality unadulterated farm milk, they are for an organized hassle-free way to get milk. They, in a nutshell, wanted a punctual, cost-effective, and a non-traditional option. Led by the increasing level of urbanization across the Indian population as urban consumers prefer clean, hygienic and ready-to-drink milk and dairy products – quoted Doodhwala co-founder Ebrahim Akbari
Doodhwala – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Doodhwala was designed to be the 2.0 version of the traditional Doodhwala. Doodhwala’s tagline is “India’s largest fresh milk delivery app”.
In a nutshell, the tagline spells out that we set standards of excellence in fresh milk & daily needs delivery by being one of the pioneers in this space, and by innovating cutting edge mobile technology .
Doodhwala Logo
Doodhwala – App
The Doodhwala mobile app lets users order fresh milk and groceries easily.
Fresh milk is a part of every household’s regular purchase. Traditionally, Indians have been reliant on their local milkmen for milk, but the urban India crowd needed something more than just milk – they need ease, freshness, and reliability. That’s the problem Doodhwala solved.
Variety of milk is a convenience that neither the local doodhwala nor the kirana store can match. Doodhwala boasted of the largest variety of milk. The platform had 70+ types of milk. Be it A2 milk, organic milk, goat milk, camel milk, or lactose-free milk, Doodhwala offered varieties to suit eclectic dietary requirements, making it the ultimate destination for all kinds of milk.
Besides milk, Doodhwala also delivered fresh dairy products, confectionery, bakery products, juices, fruits and vegetables, other grocery consumables, personal care products and many other items of your daily needs right to your doorstep.
Some USPs of the Doodhwala app were:
An easy to use app to manage for all your daily essentials, with trusted deliveries before 7 am even for orders placed until 11 pm the night before.
Subscription or creating a customizable delivery schedule made it easy to plan all repetitive purchases.
One can easily modify, cancel or pause one’s subscription at any given time.
The no checkout feature (no constant topping of wallet) was a sure favourite amongst customers.
Zero delivery charges.
Doodhwala Warehouse
Doodhwala – Business Model and How it works
There many things Doodhwala did differently than previous and current players that made its business model robust and cost-effective.
The main highlights of Doodhwala’s business model were:
The hybrid model for last mile workforce – Consisted of existing milkmen and part-time workers.
Efficient mapping of delivery routes – Significantly lesser number of delivery executives were required to complete ‘x’ amount of deliveries since all the delivery routes were mapped efficiently.
Lower dependence on manual strength – Planned delivery leading to a lower dependency on delivery executives as well as inventory.
Unlimited Delivery Base – Focus on morning delivery helped easier hiring – basically, anyone interested in working for a few hours in the morning could be a Doodhwala delivery executive.
Resource optimization – Planned demand reduced inefficiencies and optimizes better utilization of resources.
Drastically reduced cost – The right combination of technology and process in every step of the cycle – procurement, warehousing, and sorting reduced cost.
Predictive inventory – Subscription model made way for strong predictive inventory algorithms which ensured almost zero wastage.
Advanced algorithms – Cost-benefit approach towards technology laid such that every implementation either increased revenue or decreased cost across Doodhwala’s supply chains
Single delivery slot network – The network of milk delivery guaranteed low mid-mile costs due to an obvious reason i.e, no traffic in the morning hours. Plus, it also guaranteed no peak hour rush.
Market and Demand Analysis – Adoption of Omni channel is driven by digital demand. It allows optimization on the logistical front, better inventory management across all points of sale.
High customer density – To curtail last mile costs, Doodhwala completed 10000 deliveries every hour. Each delivery executive completed 100 deliveries in a 3-hour shift.
Efficacy of micro-delivery model over on-demand fleet – Ensured higher customer engagement and focused on high frequency – everyday delivery.
Since milk allows for high frequency and a daily delivery model which means for an ‘n’ number of deliveries to a customer we don’t have any additional cost i.e, no incremental delivery cost. Secondly, focusing on high density allows for costs which are 1/10th with 6-10 times efficiency. We also implement a clever usage of modern-day Technology. Thirdly our Unique business model has allowed us to scale and stay one step ahead of the competition – Ebrahim said explaining the business model.
Doodhwala raised more than $14.2 Million in funding in 3 rounds. Doodhwala’s funding details are:
Funding Date
Funding Stage
Funding Amount
Investors
August 2017
Seed Round
Undisclosed
Tom Varkey
February 2018
Seed Round
$2.2 million
Omnivore Partners
November 2018
Series A
$12 million
Undisclosed
We have always believed that the philosophy of ‘raise only when you need to’ is a golden rule which is ignored too often at an early stage of a business. Most founders raise too early and end up diluting a significant portion of their equity before the business establishes itself. Aakash and I retain over 80% of the equity even though Doodhwala is the largest milktech company at 13 lakh liters of milk a month. Having a sound cap table is particularly attractive to potential investors, for it greatly assists founders in later stages of their business – Ebrahim
Doodhwala – Advisors and Mentors
Cristina Berta Jones, the former COO of Naspers, served as an Advisor and board member. Cristina brings several years of strategic leadership experience in spearheading mergers and acquisitions, portfolio management, and strategy for prominent B2C E-Commerce companies. She led the largest divestiture of Allegro group for $3.25B and was pivotal in driving the MakeMyTrip and Ibibo merger. She previously served on the board of Flipkart, Souq.com, eMAG, Takealot, Konga, and TBO Holidays.
Doodhwala – Startup Challenges
According to Ebrahim, the last mile delivery is the biggest challenge for every e-tailer in this country. Low efficiency of resources and route-planning problems are the core issues that cause the whole system to be inefficient and expensive. This paired with the challenges in delivery infrastructure bring additional problems to the state of the last mile. However, Doodhwala had a hybrid model for its last mile workforce which consisted of existing milkmen and part-time labor.
We require a lesser number of boys to complete x amount of deliveries since our delivery routes are mapped efficiently. in other words, we have a lower dependency on labor. This ensures we never have peaking problems.
Within 3 years of operations, Doodhwala witnessed extremely rapid growth:
The company was doing around 30,000 deliveries a day.
It grew 5 times during 2018-2019 with an 85% customer retention rate. While most companies and online e-commerce retailers struggle with the frequency of purchases, Doodhwala received customers at a minimum of once a week for a recurring purchase, making its retention rates one of the highest in the industry.
Doodhwala was one of the largest milk e-tailers moving 13 lakh liters monthly and had the highest delivery fulfillment rate at 99.8%.
Doodhwala had industry’s lowest operational cost at 5% cost of sales.
Doodhwala’s shut down, despite having a wide base of happy customers, left many guessing the possible reasons behind the shuttering.
FAQs
What is a Doodhwala?
Doodhwala was a milk delivery startup.
Who has founded Doodhwala?
Aakash Agrawal and Ebrahim Akbari has founded it in 2015.
Varad Kitey
