Fortifying Business For Tomorrow

- Ashish Sinha

IT IS A LITTLE AFTER 8 am on a warm summer morning in central Punjab. We are at the door steps of Sardar Gurdev Singh, a former sarpanch of village Sherpur Kalan — situated in the historic city of Jagraon, on the outskirts of Ludhiana. The front room of his single-story house, located in a narrow by-lane of a modern village, houses a large milk storage-cum-refrigeration unit imported from Germany. At one corner, is a small milk-testing apparatus. The room has 24x7 power-supply and air conditioning, unlike the rest of the home. These are special measures taken by Danone India, a part of the French multinational food-products corporation headquartered in Paris. Globally, the €22-billion Danone is recognised for its dairy and water business. In Punjab, its focus is on inculcating some of the global best practices right at the very beginning of its small but growing dairy business — milk collection. In Jagraon and the surrounding villages, there are 8,000-plus milk collection centres like the one operated by Singh exclusively for Danone India.

“Farmers start coming at 5:30 am with milk. We collect, weigh, and test milk on the spot for fat-content and other quality checks. We then store it in a large 1,000-litre imported collection unit,” says Singh who is guided by a small team of veterinary doctors and specialists on rolls of Danone India. “Weekly payments are made to farmers for their milk. Every step is automated. The price, quantity and quality of milk are all transparently recorded in the computers,” says one of the Danone’s specialists accompanying me to the collection centres.