Troo Good sells around 15-20 lakhs chikki bars on a daily basis and primarily millet chikkis are the major product in the Rs 5 and Rs 10 price point.
Bhupati said the company is currently selling its products in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Odisha and Chhattisgarh and is now looking at expanding across the country and expects to be present pan-India within this fiscal.
“We are planning to set up two more manufacturing units – one in Chhattisgarh and one either in Haryana or Karnataka. To maintain the affordable pricing of our snacks, we source most raw materials locally and employ local people.
“Around 90 per cent of the total employees working in the manufacturing units are local women and each factory employs over 50 people taking the total headcount to around 300,” he said.
The company currently has four manufacturing units located in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana with 300 workforce, producing 25,000 kgs per day chikkis daily. “We are present in about 30,000 outlets, like kirana stores to your modern formats, across the country and in about 20,000-25,000 schools, providing a nutritious alternative for the children in their canteen. “We recently signed with police canteens. We also signed up with Jan Aushadi, to be present in all the Jan Aushadi stores, medical stores, and the largest pharma, which is also there across India,” he said.
The Hyderabad-headquartered startup had raised USD 8.4 million funding, of which USD 7.4 million was raised from OAKS Asset Management in November 2021, and the rest USD 1 million was from venture capitalist and philanthropist Sashi Reddi and his family.
“We will be utilising the funds raised for setting up new manufacturing units and adding new products like millet-based noodles and cookies,” he said.
Besides the domestic market, the company will begin exporting to the United Arab Emirates from this financial year.
“We are planning to export to the UAE markets. We have already launched our products in Dubai on a pilot basis. We expect to export to the UAE market from August onwards,” he added.
This year has been recognised as the International year of Millet and the Indian government too has identified millets as a long-term solution to the Indian food and water resource management issues.
“We are also closely working with the government and the Niti Aayog on many initiatives to create more awareness on the benefits of millets.
“We will roll out our first advertisement in September-October. We are connected with Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) for recruitment as well as for procurement of raw materials, respectively. We also give revenue share to the SHG women,” Bhupati added.
