[Exclusive] Delhi-based dairy startup Doodhvale Farms raises $3M from Atomic Capital

Dairy and daily essential startup Doodhvale Farms has raised $3 million in a Series A round led by Atomic Capital as it looks to boost its offline expansion and expand its delivery pincodes, Founder and CEO Aman Jain told YourStory.

Founded in 2019 by Sudhir Jain, Aman Jain, Ishu Jain and Sanjay Jain, the company is a vertically integrated milk delivery and daily essential provider, which offers milk, dairy-based products and daily essentials through its app and offline stores.

The round also saw participation from Singularity Early Growth Opportunities Fund, Bharat Founders Fund, Indigram Lab Foundation, and angel investors. 

The farm-to-home supplier plans to use the funds to expand its distribution channels, especially its offline foray, and penetrate its online model across more pincodes in the region. 

Doodhvale Farms, which competes with legacy players like Amul Saras and bigger incumbents like Country Delight, Akshyakalpa, and Mother Dairy along with thousands of unorganised milk farmers, is banking on product sourcing and quality as a key differentiator.

“Doodhvale Farms' milk comes from a single source, it is essentially produced at a livestock farm rather than being collected from different village-level collection centres,” Jain told YourStory. 

Collection centres don't offer brands to control farming practices and don’t enable end users to trace their milk back to the source. This setup also often has multiple vendors and agents taking care of different parts and a longer time gap between the milk being produced and delivered, he explained. 

Therefore, a vertically integrated supply chain allows Doodhvale Farms to have complete control over the end product, ranging from what kind of feed is given to the cattle to the temperature at which milk and other products are stored and transported. This allows the company to offer adulteration-free and antibiotic-free milk, said Jain. 

The company, which has been EBITDA profitable for the last three years, currently operates through its app-based subscription model and exclusive brand outlets, offering over 100 SKUs including varieties of milk, paneer, khoya, paneer, and even bread. 

According to Apoorva Gautam, Founder and Managing Partner at Atomic Capital, investors will closely track how fast and efficiently the company will acquire users and retain them, along with efficiency in their operations, given the perishable nature of its primary product i.e. milk. 

Lately, similar startups have seen heavy consolidation in the sector. Milkbasket was acquired by Jio Mart in 2023, leading to a sleuth of redundancies in the sector. Daily Ninja which was acquired by BigBasket in 2020. Its namesake, Doodhwala, shut shop back in 2019 and handed over its assets to omnichannel meat retailer FreshToHome. 

Last month, bigger incumbent Country Delight closed a Rs 200 crore debt financing from Alteria Capital to drive its brand expansion, marketing efforts and capacity building. 

NCR-based Doodhvale Farms is focusing on creating products specific to certain markets rather than general merchandise that will be popular across regions. It is doubling down on expanding its reach in Delhi-NCR and has a portfolio of desi treats that includes Mathura, Khoya Peda, Alwar Milk Cake, Punjabi Doda Barfi, etc to support demand for desi treats.

“We believe this is not a winner-take-all market and ultimately brands offering seamless experience and product quality will win,” noted Gautam, an investor in the company. 

Atomic Capital focuses on early-stage consumer startups and has previously invested in beauty and personal care player Conscious Chemist.