Arun Kumar Shrivastav
After engineering and MBA degrees, Chakradhar Gade who co-founded Country Delight along with his IIM-Indore alumni Nitin Kaushal, was thinking if a Rs 1000-crore company can be built with a capital of Rs 1-2 crore. If yes, what product and what business model they should choose.
Chakradhar was convinced that he needed to invest in something that grows quickly in value. He would not choose something that looks valuable but is not in reality. For example, buying a car is not a good investment as it depreciates from the moment it has been bought. Rather, he would invest in cattle like cows and buffalos that multiply every year. This would ensure that his investment does not evaporate in thin air.
Before Chakradhar was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, he had worked as a software developer with Infosys and Narayan Murthi as its CEO. He knew coding and this helped him develop the Country Delight app that delivered on its promise that the distribution of unadulterated and fresh milk was possible with the same ease and comfort as booking an Ola and Uber cab.
Yes, you can order your milk to be delivered at your doorstep before 7.30 am and you can pay for it through a wallet that you can fund and recharge through your debit or credit card. You can place your order the previous evening till as late as 10 PM.
Chakradhar’s business became a huge success touching the revenue of Rs 350 crore through more than 3 million milk deliveries every monthin 2020. He had started the business in 2011 with a capital of Rs 70-80 lakh and totally burnt it out by 2013. That’s the time he decided to quit his job and work full-time on his start-up, with no sign of a regular monthly salary.
Chakradhar and Nitin worked through the next 4 years completely bootstrapped until 2017 when the company posted revenue of Rs 6 crore. The patience that the entrepreneur-duo showed in these four years paid off exceedingly well. The business model that they created and the manner in which they addressed all the pain points forever set the company on a winning track.
From 2017 to 2020, Country Delight grew more than 60 times to cross the Rs 350-crore mark. It expanded its operations to 7 cities: NCR, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Chennai, and Hyderabad.
Chakradhar and Nitin’s idea of creating a Rs1000-crore company is well on track and is clearly in sight. But the success did not come without its share of roadblocks and patient handling of those situations by them. Country Delight had set out promising fresh, natural, and unadulterated milk within 24 to 36 hours of milking.
Here is a brief list of some major roadblocks the duo faced and tried to solve them:
Roadblock: As a start-up Country Delight did not have enough office space or resources to scale up its operations. Somehow, the business was not evolving into a model that can be scaled up.
Solution: The promoters decided to give away the cattle to farmers in exchange of milk that they promised to supply to Country Delight. To make this system work, Chakradhar had to chalk out the routes for the milkmen and the delivery boys. This constituted the basis for developing the Country Delight software and app that’s in use right now. After every delivery, the delivery personnel update the app. This helps the customer to track if his milk was delivered or not. In case of any confusion, the customer can call up the customer care that remains open for such complaints in the morning hours till 9 am.
Roadblock: Customers would often complain about one or the other thing as things were still not standardized. Sometimes, it was about the quality of milk, at others, it was delayed delivery or payment issues.
Solution: Chakradhar and Nitin spent the period between 2013 and 2017 to carefully note all customer feedback and work on problem-solving. By 2017, they had found solutions for all the major problems. They had created a system that withstood the highly unexpected and disruptive Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent lockdown. Even on the most difficult days of the pandemic, Country Delight was able to make deliveries to 95-96% of its customers. Each of the 3 million customers were informed every day about the delivery men and their temperature recorded before their departure for actual delivery.
Roadblock: How to convince suspecting customers who would want to know if the milk was indeed pure, fresh, and unadulterated.
Solution: Chakradhar began experimenting how some of the popular adulterants such as caustic soda and hydrogen peroxide tasted. He put these adulterants in the milk and tested it. For 3 months, he tested every sample of milk that he received from his pool of milk-supplying farmers. It not only ensured that the milk he received was pure but he also developed a different kind of association with the product. Taking this further, he also introduced a milk-testing kit that’s given free-of-cost to every new customer. This kit was in existence for more than 10 years but few would use it. Country Delight gave it to all its customers so they can test the purity of the milk. This initiative turned out to be the game changer for the company and customers’ loyalty began to build on a sound footing.