Milk has been the staple of every breakfast all around the world. A rich helping of calcium, vitamin D, and iron in liquid form has been the basic and probably one of the first things mammals consume. All the necessary nutrients by the glass full. Our country itself has its giants in dairy, like Amul and Mother Dairy, and soon enough, Country Delight.
The following blog post details the Country Delight success story
Country Delight opened up shop back in 2015 and has raked in 600 crores in profit with its brand and namesake. All that dough just from bringing back the basics in milk. And what is that you’d ask? Simple and fresh. Country Delight also partakes in the sale of milk, bread, ghee, and paneer, amongst other dairy products, delivered right to the doorsteps of groggy Indians.
Engineers Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal got the idea to sell milk after the duo started selling it part-time in 2011. They figured that milk is a business that will stick around; almost every Indian, safe for lactose intolerant ones, drinks milk. The part-time business they took part in seemed like a daunting risky task for making it a full-time means of work. They employed the use of something called bootstrapping; limited financial resources that act like built-in safety, Rs. 1 Crore worth of it. In their initial years, they lost 70% of that capital, fixing and repairing their structure and system, the last mile of delivery, and that sort. But that didn’t stop them, they held their own, strong.
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Country Delight has a subscription model which works in cohesion within a 200-kilometer radius of farmers ensuring freshness; over three lakh households are served. They have a delivery system of over 6000 delivery persons, delivering 5 million orders a month. Their operations are live in Delhi, Noida, Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, among the 15 cities they serve. The fresh dairy delivery being successful they are also planning to dip into fresh fruits and vegetables with plans in place to make available pulses, grains, pickles, and jams.
All this glory comes with fiscal foundations. Country Delight has been backed by Matrix, Trifecta Capital, and Elevation capital. They gained upwards of Rs. 2.5 Crores in their series C round. The predictions for this series D round did not disappoint, both in theory and fiscally, raking a whopping Rs. 498 Crore. Quite the big bucks, evident of their troubled but endearing past.
Country Delight has a transparency policy, defying any anonymity between the consumers and themselves. They had the brilliant idea of dispatching milk testing kits along with their deliveries. The consumers checked themselves and asked for more.
The Country Delight success story is full of ups and downs, best put forward by their founders; here’s what they have to say:
“We saw a clear problem to solve, a huge industry to tap into and a sustainable business model that we could scale using technology.” – Chakradhar Gade
“We realized that the Indian liquid milk market, despite being such a large and old industry, is devoid of any innovation and follows very unscientific practices. For example, at the initial levels of aggregation, most of the milk testing is still done by tasting it. Imagine – the milk delivered to your doorstep is checked on the judgment of someone who has tasted it.” – Nitin Kaushal
