Making it big with bajralassi, a local energy drink
Lassi with fresh cream is a classic, but Haryana’s favourite refreshment blended into an energy drink when 32-year-old farmer-entrepreneur Sanjiv Singh fused pearl millet and whey to whip up a hot seller that he calls bajra-lassi.
He started his business with a bank loan of ₹20 lakh, operating out of a small dairy farm in Nagla Roran village of Karnal. His Mishti brand now competes with big businesses in Haryana and has an annual turnover of over ₹20 lakh.
“Bajra-lassi got a good response. Now we sell about 100kg of the product at ₹100 a kg every day in several districts of Haryana,” he says. He bought the formula from the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal in 2015.
“Bajra and lassi are traditional food and drink of Haryana. But people generally don’t get both together. Therefore, the NDRI scientists researched and prepared bajra-lassi, which is a good source of energy,” Singh says.
The young agriprenuer is driven by a knack to think out of the box. In 2002, he grew remunerative crops such as mushroom and sweet corn to make a good profit from a small patch. “I started from zero and sold mushroom on the roadside like a street vendor,” Singh recalls.
In 2013, he switched to food processing and opened a dairy farm, selling mostly milk, curd and cottage cheese. The sweet and savoury bajra-lassi is an outcome of this effort. He now plans to set up a plant in Palwal district to tap the market in Delhi and its satellite cities.
Named after his daughter Mishti, he wants his brand to become one of the market leaders in the next 10 years.
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