Wonders With Wonder Grains

Troo Good, already a market leader in the Millet snacks category, synthesizes taste, health, super-nutrition and a low cost in one magical flagship product - Millet chikki. This startup also meets sustainability goals with local communities job creation, significant water conservation, smart production and safe environment. The proven fiscal results pave the way to rapid scalability, slated to close FY23 with a topline of INR 70 Crores.

STORY

Affordability, taste and nutrition in one snack – sounds too good to be true? Troo Good, which takes pride in billing itself as India’s largest millet snacks brand today, has managed to tick all three boxes and then some, led by its bestselling Millet Chikki.

Troo Good is manufactured by MForMillet Foods Private Limited, the second successful start-up founded by US-returned tech executive Raju Bhupati. The Hyderabad-based entrepreneur with a passion for food pioneered one of the first shared cloud kitchen models, Hello Curry, in 2013. Five years later, he went on to launch Troo Good as a Millet Paratha brand catering to schools and offices. The Millet Chikki soon followed, born of the founder’s urge to deliver a universally loved product with health benefits at price points of Rs.5 and Rs.10. The results speak for themselves now.

Today, four factories of the company across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Chattisgarh manufacture over 20mn Millet Chikkis every month – and another 10mn of its other snacks – using the company’s proprietary methodology. The protein, fibre and calcium content have been calibrated to combat nutritional deficiency in children, pregnant and lactating women. Bhupati reveals, “We have served millet chikkis to 38 crore children and 45 lakh pregnant women to date.”

The goodness doesn’t restrict to the product. Millet as a crop saves water. The direct procurement practices adopted by the company ensure that the farmer at the last mile benefits without middlemen. To date, the company has procured 3.4 mn kilograms of millets, saving over 230 bn liters of water, notes the founder.

Besides procurement, the company practises local hiring with a focus on women and self-help- groups, local production, and local selling. Across eight states, its Millet Chikkis are sold in over 15,000 kirana stores, at modern trade, and in over 25,000 schools. Catering to the markets in these states are 250 of the company’s employees. The ‘local’ strategy ensures that logistics costs are minimised, dovetailing into the brand’s ‘affordable nutrition’ mission.

It’s no surprise then, that close on the heels of the Poshak Anaaj Award 2022 for the Best Start- up (Scaling-Up) organised by the Ministry of Agricutlure and Farmers Welfare, ICAR and IIMR, comes the recognition from Outlook India Awards 2022, as the only ‘Product of the Year’ for the economic and environmental impact, infrastructure created, product innovation monetised and Indian lives that it has benfited.

Affordable and tasty nutrition is what the brand was born for and it is what it is being built to, even as it scales. When it secured a Series A funding of Rs.55 crore from OAKS Asset Management in late 2021, Troo Good was selling only half a million Millet based products across schools and IT companies. Since then Millet Chikkis make the lion’s share of the product portfolio and continue to grow exponentially.

Led by the popularity of Troo Good Millet Chikkis in physical retail formats and online, the brand today offers Coconut Bites, Rafils, Peanut Chikki and even a Choco Chikki. With increasing health consciousness among parents and even youngsters themselves, it could become the go- to green snack for mass distribution on occasions like birthdays.

The year 2023 has been designated as the ‘International Year of Millet’. The Indian government has acknowledged millets as a long-term solution to food and water resource management issues, besides recognising its health and nutritional benefits. With recognition from governments and the consuming public, 2023 could well be the year of Troo Good too – led by its Millet Chikki.