Sid’s Farm gives you a packet full of health and happiness at your doorstep

Good food and exercise are mandatory for a healthy lifestyle. But the availability of good food poses a challenge. Vegetables, fruits and dairy products are all adulterated these days and it is hard to find the safer ones from the market. Kitchen gardens have helped to overcome this but the case is different for dairy products.

Sid’s Farm, a premium dairy brand based in Telangana, promises to change this situation by providing families and communities with pure, healthy, adulterant-free milk and milk products. They do an average of 2000 tests daily to ensure that the best milk reaches its consumers. They work closely with small co-operatives of farmers who source and produce milk using sustainable dairy farming practices. Head over to the interview with Kishore Indukuri, Founder of Sid’s Farm, to know more about this venture.

Give a brief info about your startup?

Sid’s Farm is a premium dairy brand based in Telangana. Sid’s Farm aims to provide families and communities with pure, healthy, adulterant-free milk and milk products. Since its inception, the brand has been able to adhere to strict norms of testing milk extensively for antibiotics, hormones and preservatives and other quality parameters on a daily basis.  They do an average of 2000 tests daily to ensure the best milk reaches the consumer.  This tested milk is then pasteurized, chilled and delivered direct to customer. It works closely with a small co-operatives of farmers who source & produce milk using sustainable dairy farming practices.

Sid’s Farm product range includes whole cow’s milk, whole buffalo’s milk, skim milk, cow’s butter, cow’s ghee, buffalo’s butter, buffalo’s ghee, cow’s curd, buffalo’s curd and paneer.

Today, Sid’s Farm sells around 20,000 litres of milk to customers in and around Hyderabad with a turnover of Rs 44 crore.

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

Sid’s Farm is a promise from me to my son Siddharth saying that we produce the best possible milk and this is the promise we extend to not just our own family, but to all the families around us. There is still widespread adulteration and rampant use of antibiotics in milk production. Sids Farm solves this problem by producing milk that is free from antibiotics, preservatives and hormones. 

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

Kishore Indukuri, founder of Sid’s farm is an IIT graduate, with a Masters and a Doctorate from University of Massachusetts. He worked at Intel in the US for six years before returning to his agricultural roots India in the year 2013 and set up a dairy farm with 20 cows on a leased farm near the Hyderabad international airport in Shamshabad.

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

Sids Farm is located in Telangana. I have been brought up in Telangana so naturally for me this is my place and wanted to give back purity to the people of Telangana. 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

When I hear the word paranoid, I remember Intel’s Andy Grove famous quote “Only the Paranoid survive”. As a start-up, we must constantly innovate and stay on top of everything our customer expects-great quality dairy products, on time delivery every single morning and exceptional customer support. As we scale and grow, each one of these is really important and unless we are paranoid about staying on top of these, we will perish.

Who are your competitors and how are you better than them?

We are in premium/pure milk space. Each of the players in this space are enabling this new market (which did not exist earlier). Country Delight, Akshayakalpa, Pride of Cows and many other players operate in this space.   

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a start-up founder and how do you manage it?

I truly like what I am doing now and I do not think of work-life balance as such. Of course, I have a really supporting family, especially my wife Hima who supports me in this journey fully. 

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

We have not raised money till now. We are now currently creating models for expansion/growth and will look out for funding as these are finalized. 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

 I am a soft-spoken guy with a strong will. Our team understands me and my little quirks and is very accommodating of me. 

What gets you excited about this company?

Dairy business is exciting for me. The entire supply chain process is challenging, starting from the milking the cows at 4 am to ensuring the milk is delivered at right time at customer’s doorstep. As people’s days start with chai or coffee, the milk should reach them by 6 am. 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

I typically start my day with Shambavi Kriya early in the morning. Then move on to spending time with the kids before they head out to school. I typically start by looking at my calendar to see if there are priorities that I signed up for. Based on this, I spend my day either in the office or the farm/processing facility. Typically come back to my home around 7 PM or so. Of course, this is very different from my early days when we started Sids Farm. In the early days of the farm, I would wake up much earlier and then handle lot more operations intensive tasks throughout the day. Thanks to our team who is helping me with all of this now.

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

I was very lucky to have great team members join me at different points of Sids Farm Journey. Some came to us through references, some were family members and many others I am very fortunate to have met. Vasu (my cousin), Siva, Bobby helped me lay a strong foundation in the early years with my wife Hima helping Sids Farm with the design & branding work. Then Shivam Gupta came along and laid the next strong roots by bringing in dedicated CX, OPs and HR team members Sahana, Sai Kiran, Ajay, Akshara, Safal, Nagaraju, Sandeep, Anusha, Ishika, Ganesh, Sudha, Sriharika, Kiran, Suresh, Keerthana, Pratyusha and many others. My dad IN Raju led all the construction efforts of our farm/processing facilities in Shabad. We had a great factory team in Vamsi, Geetha, Naresh, SivaSankar, Srinu & Prasad amongst many others supporting us. Our advisors Mr. Naidu Darapaneni & Ram Nutakki joined us during the early Covid days and have been a part of team since then. We now have a new supercharged team with Divyadeep Lolla(AVP, Operations), Sriharsha Vaddakattu(AVP Finance),  Rajesh Degala(AVP, Sales) and Sujatha Ramakotty(HR GM) leading a large team of dedicated folks propelling us in our current Journey.

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