What made the founders of D2C milk and grocery delivery company Country Delight decide to start it?
The NDDB may have become the world's greatest milk producer thanks to the NDDB's historic Operation Flood, but it did not organise the industry or address other connected issues.
Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal claim that they are still having trouble "sourcing high-quality milk."
This prompted the pair to launch the direct-to-consumer (D2C) milk and grocery delivery service Country Delight in 2013.
Country Delight is a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand that delivers natural food necessities from the farmer to the customer's doorstep. With a supply system spanning 11 states, it delivers more than eight million cases of milk each month across 15 cities.
In May 2022, Temasek and Venturi Partners, which are backed by Nicholas Cator, gave Country Delight $108 million as part of their Series D fundraising.
A total of $147 million in equity capital has been raised.
Getting started
Chakradhar, the CEO and co-founder, and Nitin, the COO and co-founder, went to IIM Indore together and graduated at the same time. After that, Chakradhar worked in banking and Nitin worked in investments before they started their own business.
They contend that India has two food markets: one that is largely unorganized and has inconsistent quality, and the other that is highly organised and where the "essence and naturalness of food are utterly lost." This is because the supply chain makes it hard to see how good a product is, and the logistics system is broken up.
This was Country Delight's original problem statement, and the founders of the company wanted to find a solution based on customer feedback.
"With little money and no experience in the dairy industry, we launched this firm. We had to start from scratch because Chakradhar comes from a financial background, he explains.
"We chose a piece of land before starting by buying 50 cattle. He claims the milk output decreased as the milk cycle became erratic since we didn't know how to handle the animals.
By the end of 2013, we were producing 200 litres of milk per day. We estimated it would take us two years to reach 5,000 litres, but it really took us six. We had already used over 70% of the bootstrapped funds at this point. Thus, the road to where we are now was a lengthy one.
The team had to address a number of issues, including how to get milk, address last-mile deliveries, and manage customer acquisition expenses.
But, according to Chakradhar, "by integrating our supply chain with technology and developing scalable choices, we were able to overcome these problems."
