Sparkling Milk

Nashik-Based Sarda Farms Does Not Aggregate Milk From Milkmen. It Produces Its Own At An Automated Factory, And Markets It As A Premium Product.

- Ajita Shashidhar

When Shrirang Sarda, Founder, Sarda Farms, for-ayed into the dairy business in 2013, he was keen on giving consumers the old-world experience of getting fresh milk delivered at their doorsteps – a luxury in today’s times. He painstakingly bred a herd of 1,300 Holstein cows on his sprawling 11- acre farm in the outskirts of Nashik. He imported the sperms of Holstein bulls from Holland and injected the herd. The milk farm is completely mechanised the whole process from milking the cows to aggregation and finally packaging is automated, with zilch human intervention.

“I was clear that when I foray into the dairy business, I will not get into the aggregation model (collecting milk from multiple farmers – a practice followed by most dairy manufacturers in India) which is prone to adulteration. I decided to have my own farm from day one,” says Sarda. He spent months learning the best practices in dairy on the farms of Holland and Denmark.

The fresh, uncontaminated milk offering comes at an added cost because owning a farm and producing milk is far more expensive than buying from farmers. The cost of producing one litre of Sarda Milk is at least ₹10 per litre more than sourcing from a farmer. Therefore, he decided to price the milk at a premium – ₹90 per litre, as opposed to ₹40 per litre from most other brands. Sarda has used design to convey a sense of tradition and heritage, rendering a premium look. The milk is packaged in glass bottles much like it used to be in the good old days, before the poly-pack milk trend began.