The Milky Way

With its ethical sourcing model, Bhubaneswar-based Milk Mantra set out to revolutionise the production of milk and milk products in eastern India, pulling farmers out of poverty along the way.

- Varsha Meghani

On the busy streets of Bhubaneswar, Milk Mantra’s lemon green hoardings stand out. A cow with big, round eyes stares out at passersby, her eyes forming the Os in ‘Milky Moo’, the name by which the company sells its produce.

An auto driver who moonlights as a freelance photographer in Odisha’s capital city says Milky Moo’s quality is much better than OmFed, the state’s co-operative dairy company. “In OmFed, they only put powder,” he says. After a slight pause, he adds: “Milky Moo must also be putting powder in their milk, but not that much. It’s fresh and tasty. It’s only a little more expensive, but it’s better for our children.”

Milk Mantra boasts of this superior quality loud and clear: The advertisements highlight there’s “no need to boil” the milk, a compulsive practice among Indians who believe it kills bacteria.

To find out what makes Milk Mantra’s milk and milk products, including curd, buttermilk and paneer, better—so much so that the company went from turning ₹18 crore in revenue its first year of operations in 2012 to ₹182 crore in the last fiscal— Forbes India travelled to the source.

Heading eastwards to Puri and beyond, as the bustle of Bhubaneswar gives way to sparser buildings and more open fields, Milk Mantra’s branding is still hard to miss. On bus stop hoardings and kirana stores splashes of lemon green dominate. OmFed’s weathered milk booths, on the other hand, are scattered and barely visible.