This startup firm delivers farm fresh and certified organic milk at your doorstep

Adulteration in milk is an ongoing problem in India which has led to the emergence of a host of milk-focused companies. One such startup is Happy Milk, co-founded by Mehal Kejriwal in December 2017.

“Happy Milk was born out of a desire to provide consumers with fresh, lip-smacking and wholesome milk. Our milk is produced by happy unconfined cows, fed on organically grown fodder, using advanced German technology that ensures zero contamination or adulteration,” says Kejriwal, the co-founder of the company.

Happy Milk serves individual buyers, stores like Nature’s Basket, Foodhall to name a few, it even takes bulk orders. It has monthly subscriptions through apps like Daily Ninja, Doodhwala and Amazon Prime Now. The startup has its own farm on the outskirts of Bengaluru with around 400 cows.

“At our farm, the fodder is grown organically (free from pesticides and insecticides). We have detailed diet charts for the cows which include about 11-odd food nutrients that result in a healthy, complete diet and thus good quality milk is assured,” Kejriwal says.

German technology company, Gea, partnered with Happy Milk to design its farm in aspects like from where the milking parlour should be, to the location of the calves, the packaging process, pasteurising and homogenising expertise and other processes. Gea also helped Happy Milk fit a monitoring device, similar to a Fitbit wearable, on the cows at the farm. This technology helps in monitoring each animal’s daily activity – the number of steps walked, how much the cow has eaten on a particular day, body heat rate and the lactating days for the cows. In the event of any unusual activity, the device sends a notification to relevant people.

For enhancing the milking process, Gea has developed tailored, high-performance milking and cooling solutions. All the components of the farm are customised from clustered cooling equipment to parlour milking technologies and computer-controlled milking. According to Kejriwal, at the moment Happy Milk delivers 4,000 litres per day. “We want to reach 8,000 to 10,000 litres a day,” she says.

Happy Milk has to compete with companies like Milkbasket, Alepa, among others. Kejriwal said that a standalone milk business cannot sustain itself. Towards this, her venture has launched a variety of products like salted and unsalted organic butter, butter milk, curd etc.