India grows pulses and millets in enormous quantities, yet, by C. S. Jadhav’s estimate, nearly 73 percent of its people fall short of their daily protein requirement. For Jadhav,
Co-Founder and CEO of Nutricircle Ltd., that gap is not a story of scarcity. It is the story of crops that were never engineered for the moment, and he co-founded a company to change that.
Nutricircle, based in Hyderabad, describes itself as a Deep FoodTech company. Its premise is simple: India’s next big export should not be a raw commodity but a finished, science-backed nutrition ingredient. The company says it is the first in the world to isolate protein from millets, including foxtail millet and amaranth, opening what Jadhav calls an entirely new category in plant protein.
The portfolio now stretches from foxtail millet, pearl millet and amaranth to chickpea, rice, lentils, horse gram, green gram and kidney beans. Protein content ranges from 35 to 90 percent, and the clean-label ingredients are sold under the Go Nourish™ platform. Their uses run from sports nutrition and functional beverages to bakery, dairy alternatives, ready-to-eat foods, clinical nutrition and preventive healthcare.
Two complementary careers sit behind the effort. Jadhav brings three decades across sustainable agriculture, plant proteins, nutrition-focused foods, bioenergy, medicinal crops and organic wellness. Hitesh Patel, Managing Director, has spent more than two decades in private equity, strategic finance, IPOs and mergers and acquisitions, and took part in raising over US$50 million through strategic transactions. One supplies the science; the other, the financial discipline needed to scale.
Their guiding principle is “Planet First. Consumer Health First.” Jadhav explains it plainly: healthier people depend on a healthier planet. That is why the company starts with climate-resilient crops such as millets and pulses, which need less water, improve soil fertility and reduce carbon emissions. Every ingredient, he adds, is clean-label and validated with leading research institutions.
The farm is part of the formula. Nutricircle’s model links soil, seeds, science, sustainability and solutions, and its flagship High-Protein Chickpea Value Chain, built with ICRISAT, joins seed development, regenerative agriculture, Farmer Producer Organisations, processing and protein isolation. Alongside it come a proposed 100-acre Integrated Resource and Innovation Centre and seed production centres in Leh-Ladakh and Uttarakhand, which together aim to support nearly 50,000 acres of cultivation and more than 1,000 FPOs.
Research partnerships carry the science. Nutricircle works with ICRISAT, NIFTEM, CFTRI, IIMR, Nutrihub, AgHub, ICT and Agro Food Parks, and is pursuing high-protein pearl millet, precision fermentation and other next-generation protein technologies. To widen its reach, it
has set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Denmark for European R&D, technology partnerships and market expansion.
The ambition, in Jadhav’s words, is “Bharat Ka Protein”: affordable, science-backed plant protein within reach of every Indian household, and India recognised as a global leader in sustainable nutrition. It is also a bid to shift the country’s farm economy from selling commodities to selling value, in step with the Atmanirbhar Bharat aspiration of nourishing its own people.
If Nutricircle succeeds, the change will be felt first in the field. Higher-value markets for climate-resilient crops mean better prospects for farmers, while accessible protein reaches consumers of all ages. Jadhav and Patel are betting that India’s journey from the food bowl of the world to its protein hub begins with crops the country has grown for centuries.
