Hardoi Boards The Milk Express
May 16, 2019Rural regions of India have always been the heartbeat of our nation, providing essential staple goods and produce for all, yet economic disparities between urban and rural areas continues to grow. In order to create a successful model of growth and development, it is necessary to come together, stay together, and grow together.
Under HCLSamuday, which started in April 2015 with a vision to create a sustainable, scalable and replicable model of rural development, we’ve been working towards empowering farmers of District Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh through various interventions. Since 2017, the project’s interventions in Dairy Value-Chain Development domain have helped 9000+ farmers across 175 villages to generate a total revenue of Rs. 26.71 Crore. The intervention today aggregates an average of 12,500 litres of milk per day.
This day marks as a proud beginning, as we join hands with Banaskantha District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union Limited, Asia’s largest milk aggregator, which collects an average of around 50 lakh liters of milk every day and produces milk under the brands of Amul, Sagar & Banas. The Dairy Value-Chain Development intervention incubated by HCLSamuday over the last two years will now be carried out in collaboration with Banas Dairy. This partnership has the sole purpose of uplifting and empowering the farmers we support under our Dairy intervention and take this model toward greater heights of success.
Mr. Kamrajbhai R. Chaudhary, Managing Director, Banas Dairy said, “We were very keen to expand our operations in Uttar Pradesh and the model Samuday has implemented is praiseworthy. The processes are in place and we are happy to take over this project and turn it into a business model benefitting our farmers. We will provide good quality feed to Dairy farmers that will ensure that the quality of milk being produced improves significantly. It is the first time that Banas Dairy has collaborated with a CSR entity to reach farmers. I believe this project has great potential and we are excited to witness the results.”
At present, we’ve entered into this partnership for a period of three years, wherein the front end infrastructure of Banas Dairy will work toward giving Hardoi’s farmers the return on their produce directly to them, without the involvement of any middlemen. This model ensures that the associated farmers get 360° support, right from skilling & technical support to optimisation on the financial and marketing fronts of the model, and works towards empowering farmers by maximising their profits.
Speaking on the occasion, Project Director of HCL Samuday Ms. Navpreet Kaur describes, “Uttar Pradesh is the largest producer of milk in the country, contributing 17% to India’s total milk production. However, the dairy sector remains largely unstructured where small and marginal farmers, who produce minor quantities of surplus milk have no proper channels to sell that milk at best prices in the market. Also, the quality of milk often gets compromised with rampant adulteration. Samuday has been working towards implementing processes that would ensure that profits of milk marketing go to the dairy farmers directly instead of the middlemen. This partnership is a true success for Samuday as it proves that the concept we incubated is sustainable as a business and can be replicated in other parts of the State or the larger country. We are thrilled to partner with Banas Dairy, who is the largest supplier of milk to Amul.”
With the collaboration of Banas Dairy and HCLSamuday, Hardoi would now flourish at the pace it deserves and realise the dream of a Truly Developing India.