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Informed InvestoRR
There was a time when the clinking of glass bottles announced the arrival of milk in the morning. Then came the little crates that gave way to plastic packets that doodhwalas would leave in the bags hung outside your door.
Pouches and then tetra packs made buying milk more convenient, but it also started to feel like just another packaged item and a daily guessing game – is this milk pure? Is it watered down? Will it spoil by noon? You’d shrug all those questions and pour the milk into your tea, wondering if anyone still got real milk anymore.
Then came two men with a simple question: why couldn’t the milk be like it used to be — thick, fresh, and trustworthy?
The duo started a small home-delivery experiment that would go on to redefine how India consumes milk and build a ₹1,380 crore business in the process.
Read on to know how they milked the situation!
One Fresh Start
In 2011, Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal, IIM Indore alumni, worked together at IBF Financial. That’s when the idea of dealing in milk struck them. Not the milk sealed in plastic packets, but the kind they had grown up consuming: genuine, fresh, and creamy.
In 2013, the duo left their jobs with a bold idea: deliver farm-fresh milk directly to homes. No middlemen, no tampering, no long storage. Just clean, cold, unadulterated milk within 36 hours of milking.
Their pilot? A handful of homes in Gurgaon, one small rented facility, and early morning rides on rented bikes to nearby farms to collect milk themselves. And thus began a journey that would be named Country Delight in 2015.
With No Capital & Background
With minimal capital made up of their savings and zero background in dairy, the duo focused on one thing: Quality.
There was no marketing budget or campaign, but a lab-certified milk report. Every customer received third-party quality certificates with their delivery, bringing transparency.
If the cream on top didn’t convince people, the free milk testing kit they handed out would. Their hunch was right. Families came back, and orders grew.
Despite Being Bootstrapped
Despite the growing orders, Country Delight was bootstrapped for four years. But the founders didn’t stop. They scaled slowly but surely, ensuring the quality still matched their promise.
In 2017, they raised their first external funding and expanded operations from Delhi NCR to major metropolitan areas such as Mumbai and Bengaluru.
From milk, they also moved to kitchen essentials—curd, paneer, ghee, eggs, bread, fruits, and vegetables—all curated with the same freshness standard.
It didn’t make the cut if it didn’t meet their 36-hour promise.
By 2018, they launched their app-only subscription mode, letting customers modify orders until 11 PM and receive deliveries by 7 AM. No minimum order. No delivery fees. Just a promise: naturally good, naturally pure.
The Competition
As Country Delight grew, they weren’t the only ones who saw opportunity in your morning glass of milk.
Startups like Supr Daily (backed by Swiggy), Milkbasket (acquired by Reliance), and BB Daily (run by BigBasket) entered the market with big budgets and bigger investors. These platforms promised quick deliveries, a wide range of essentials, and hyperlocal convenience.
But Country Delight didn’t flinch.
They built their own cold chain, sourced directly from farmers, ran over 26 quality checks, and even let customers test their milk at home.
Supr Daily eventually shut down. Milkbasket struggled with scale. But Country Delight held its ground, with a model that was hard to copy and even harder to scale.
at the Core, Trust on the Surface
Country Delight wasn’t just a dairy brand. Over the years, it became a full-stack tech company and rolled out 17 in-house apps to manage sourcing, quality checks, delivery routes, and real-time milk temperature tracking.
Their system, called Nectar, could detect if a single milk can crossed 4°C during transit. If it did, it was discarded — no questions asked.
This obsessive attention to quality meant wastage stayed low and trust stayed high. As demand grew, so did their tech. In time, they were delivering 5 million orders per month across 15+ cities.
The Storm and Scaling Up
During the pandemic, Country Delight stayed in motion when the world came to a standstill. The company secured curfew passes, rerouted logistics, and kept daily deliveries running without missing a day.
By 2022, it raised $108 million from Temasek and others, valuing the brand at $615 million. In FY23, the company clocked ₹945 crore in revenue. A year later in FY24, that number jumped to ₹1,380 crore — a 46% YoY growth.
Even more impressively, they’re nearing profitability — a rare feat in the D2C space.
But A Movement
By 2024, Country Delight wasn’t just delivering milk. It was delivering trust in food. Every bottle, every egg, every fruit told a story of direct sourcing, minimal processing, and customer-first thinking.
They expanded into cold-pressed oils, pulses, pickles, and spices. And it wasn’t a supermarket free-for-all. Each item was selected to meet the same quality threshold that defined their milk.
With a fleet of 6,000+ delivery agents, a loyal customer base, and operations across 11 states, the company is eyeing a bigger leap: an IPO within 2–3 years.
Expansion
Country Delight now operates in over 15 cities, operates a pan-India cold chain, and delivers to thousands of homes every day. But it’s just getting started.
With expansion into newer categories, AI-driven logistics, electric delivery fleets, and deeper farmer partnerships, Country Delight is building something more than a company; it’s rebuilding the missing trust between food producers and families.
From a two-man team ferrying milk in a hatchback to a ₹1,380 crore brand with IPO ambitions, Country Delight proves that old problems need fresh thinking and fresher milk.
Yash Vora is a financial writer with the Informed InvestoRR team at Equentis. He has followed the stock markets right from his early college days. So, Yash has a keen eye for the big market movers. His clear and crisp writeups offer sharp insights on market moving stocks, fund flows, economic data and IPOs. When not looking at stocks, Yash loves a game of table tennis or chess.
