Provilac Dairy Farms Pvt Ltd has raised Rs 1.5 crore ($225,000) in angel funding, its founder told VCCircle, as the Pune-based company looks to expand operations to other cities.
Atul Chordiya, the promoter and chairman of Panchshil Realty, participated in this round in his personal capacity.
“We raised this funding for product development and running marketing campaigns. Part of the capital will also go towards expanding operations in Bangalore and Mumbai,†said Siddharth Runwal, CEO of Provilac.
Launched in 2013, the company sells organic milk through a premium-priced subscription-based model. The company has a subscriber base of 1,200 residents in Pune and charges Rs 75 for a litre of pasteurized and homogenized milk, said Runwal.
The company doesn’t have a dairy farm of its own but procures milk from three satellite farms in Pune with each providing 10,000-15,000 litres a day. “We have invested Rs 20-25 lakh on each firm and provided them equipment and technological know-how,†he said.
Runwal is an alumnus of Massey University in New Zealand. He worked in the dairy sector in New Zealand for 10 years, including five years with dairy giant Fonterra as a researcher. Later, he was also associated with bio-tech firm Polybatics and packaging solutions provider Tetra Pak.
Runwal, who has invested Rs 50 lakh to set up this firm, said he is in talks with several investors in Mumbai Angels to raise another Rs 1.5 crore.
The company has 20 employees. It is expected to hire 10 more by March next year, including some at the senior level.
The company claims to have revenue of Rs 1.2 crore last fiscal year and is aiming to quadruple it this year.
The dairy sector has seen a number of deals in the past few months. In October, Chennai-based milk startup Astra Dairy Farms Pvt Ltd raised an angel round of funding from a Danish textile firm.
In September, Sahayog Dairy, a Madhya Pradesh-based dairy startup, raised Rs 11 crore ($1.6 million) in a Series A round of funding from social venture capital investor Acumen.
Haryana-based dairy startup 4S Foods, which sells organic milk through a premium-priced subscription-based model, is also in talks with a clutch of venture capital firms to raise funding.
In other key developments in the dairy sector, among the fairly mature firms, Prabhat Dairy recently went public and also attracted funding from TVS Capital.