A Brand is a Legac y built forever
Dairy Day was born in 2002 when industry veterans along with few more colleagues, having decades of experience in the ice cream industry, decided to quit their MNC jobs and nurture a brand with their passion. They saw a market opportunity which no one else could see. Jaganath ,co-founder of Dairy Day says Mr. Narayana Murthy of Infosys is one of the biggest inspiration for them.
Jaganath has diverse marketing experience & Finance experience, whereas Balaraju has deep experience in technical & production, both complement each other. Both were born and brought up in a middle class family and from the same district. They came to know each other while they were working in the ice cream division of a MNC.
The initial days were not so easy. Like most of the new ventures they also struggled to cement their position in the market. Arranging capital was the biggest challenge in front of them but their passion and determination helped them
to overcome the obstacles. After initial hiccup the start-up picked up the pace and created a strong place in Indian ice cream market.
In the first year itself, the brand crossed Rs.1 crore sales mark and in 2016 it crossed Rs. 100 crore milestones. The company has been maintaining a good quality manufacturing process and meeting all quality parameters from the very beginning. In 2013 they took a big leap by opening a state-ofthe-art manufacturing unit with world class machineries and latest technical know-how. From its humble beginning Dairy Day now has production capacity of 1.4 lakh litres per day spread over 2 lakh square feet facility in Karnataka.
In 2015 Dairy Day crossed the target of 10000 retail outlets and now present across 30,000 retail outlets across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Maharashtra, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Timely delivery, maintaining hygiene in every step and quality products at right price are some of the ethics “Dairy Day” always maintain. It follows various ATL and BTL marketing activities to promote business.
As a future goal “Dairy Day” is working towards becoming much more stronger brand by leveraging their products and marketing strength. Their aim is to ensure profitable growth while ensuring value for all their stakeholders. As mentioned by Promoter “Our brand is as good as our reputation. We work hard every day to cherish it and grow it further.”
EMPLOYEE TO EMPLOYERS
Jaganath and Balaraju had worked together for seven years in a MNC. Both felt that the challenge was the transferable nature of job, which was affecting the studies of children. Besides, they had been through the entire play as salaried executives with virtually no challenges left to explore.. An opportunity presented itself in 2002 when there was no established icecream player focusing on tier II and tier III markets. That’s when they decided to move out with a dream to be on their own.
There was a huge market opportunity in tier II and III towns as no established player was focusing due to supply side constraints (cold chain, electricity failures etc.). We thought supply side issues should not be the reasons for not serving a market. We saw an opportunity which probably no one else could see at that time. That’s when we agreed that even if it meant working for a lower immediate income, it would be better working for oneself than for another company. The new experience was challenging. We had limited capital to invest; we started small; we appraised Indian equipment; we leased a small building and we settled for modest manufacturing capacity of 500 litres a day. We struck lucky; a well wisher who possessed a manufacturing facility was selling equipment that MN Jaganath, Co-Founder
had not been used for years; we acquired them, we got the machines running within few days.
Once the cash flows started coming in, we purchased small piece of land, commissioned a dedicated factory, scaled to 10,000 litres per day and ran operations 20 hours a day. What provided us with confidence was that we were bringing to the table two distinctive competencies: one had the capacity to produce quality ice cream with great taste and the other had the capacity to sell every litre of ice cream produced. Besides we did not aim to become a large player, we were happy to aspire to remain a moderately growing manufacturer with loyal customers.
We are a blessed team, we started getting more and more orders, to meet this demand we kept on increasing the production capacity and we became one of the top 10 brands in India.Today Dairy Day is available in Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Goa, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra in more than 30,000 Retail outlets.
Quality, Honesty, simple and value for money and of course a great team, who trust each other are the few reasons for our growth. There were a number of lessons and learnings we picked up in our professional and personal life. More importantly, we were all on the same page when it came to surplus money. We would not pay dividends out to shareholders, we would reinvest everything into the company, the working team would work for salaries from day one and we would be employees first and promoters thereafter.
