Three engineering graduates with an interest in the agricultural and dairy industries teamed up to address the most pressing problem in the market: deteriorating quality of milk.
Dairy production in India is below average in terms of quality and yield per cow due to a lack of technical feeding methodologies and high-quality feed products. Existing agritech companies focus on improving linkage, supply chain, fruits, and vegetables, setting aside the animal husbandry segment especially in the area of input products.
Kumar Ranjan, Ravi Chauhan, and Ankit Patel setup eFeed in 2021 to tackle these issues. Focusing on the animal health and nutrition sector, the company creates high quality feed supplements & additives for improving the quality of dairy and milk products.
Ranjan, co-founder and CEO of eFeed, told Entrackr, “There is a huge disparity in the input cost put by the farmers on their cattle and the money made from the production of milk annually. They are not able to recover the expenses. Only two things can be done — either reduce the input cost or increase the milk output — both ways farmers can make money.”
The Pune-based company makes supplements with vitamins, minerals, and microbes to not only help cattle produce more milk but better-quality milk. The supplements will be focused on giving cattle the proper nutrients it needs to maintain a longer healthy life and help in bettering gut health. The supplements also target the problem of excess methane emissions from cattle due to poor diet.
If the input is good then the subsequent result will be seen in the output, said Ranjan. Following the D2C model, formulations are made and the products are sold directly to farmers through on ground and fulfillment partners.
Additionally, a digital nutrition app is offered assisting in the education of farmers about the nutrition of cattle. The app helps in ration balancing (feed composition) for cattle by localizing feed raw materials. It also focuses on the quality feed inputs by creating high quality additives (protinex for cattle) to be added to the raw materials. The digital advisory and quality inputs ensure better quality milk production and higher yield from the animals.
India’s animal healthcare market size reached Rs 73.4 billion as of 2022. This is expected to increase to Rs 120.3 billion by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate of 8.94%. Within a market of this size, eFeed has managed to raise a seed round raising $1 million in December 2022. The round was led by Omnivore followed by Better Capital, Huddle, AngelList, and Let’s Venture.
With no significant local competition, the company competes globally against Virbac, Nutreco, and Elanco.
With a valuation of $4 million, the company has an active user base of one lakh farmers. Its operations are currently focused on Uttar Pradesh. Their current focus is to expand and strengthen the business within the state before moving on to other geographies in the country.
Source @Entrackr
