Millet Marvels -A marvellous story of introducing millet cloud kitchen

By: B Dayakar Rao, Veeresh S Wali, Ranjith Reddy
Health and wellness have come to the forefront in the last decade on account of escalating healthcare costs, rise in lifestyle-related disorders and lack of preventive care. Increasing incidence of lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension has prompted healthcare professionals to promote wellness by encouraging behavioural changes. The burden of lifestyle diseases in India is 61.3 per cent, and it is feared that the new Indian Council of Medical Research guidelines that have increased the average weight of adults by five kgs could add to it.The ideal body weight is revised and increased by National Institute of Nutrition from 60 to 65 kg for men and from 50 to 55 kg for women earlier this month. It is an acceptable reference body weight through a lifespan. It was changed after a decade as it was found that body frames and compositions have undergone a change and the ideal weight of 50 kg in women, for example, was not applicable to man.
Millet Marvels: A doctor’s way through millets
Banking on this trend, Dr Bharath Reddy, who is a senior consultant cardiologist and a Telugu film actor turned entrepreneur himself, decided to give a push to the increasing millet consumption and started Millet Marvels, a restaurant in Hyderabad. Dr Reddystarted the venture, ‘Millet Marvels’ with technological support from Nutrihub-IIMR through its incubation program under Rashtriya Krishi Vikasa Yojana (RKVY) – RAFTAAR a flagship programme of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India to provide financial assistance to upscale agri and food businesses,
Millet Marvels’ is an innovative start-up incubated and graduated from Nutrihub. Millet Marvels is a first of its kind initiative with the idea of cloud kitchen in millet sector and the only start-up in the country catering to diverse millet recipes serving national and international cuisines. Menu at Millet Marvels is expressly designed to fulfil innumerable factors including taste and well-being. They are working with a vision to help the customers choose what builds them in a right manner and focus beyond customer gratification. Millet Marvels aims to innovate the energy food to bring out a wider variety to the food plate of common. Centrally situated in the pearl city of Hyderabad, Millet Marvels is a modern vintage kitchen offering well crafted, vigorous menu. They are committed to serve a well-balanced Nutritional Recipe’s with a perfect blend of healthy and tasty food. They have planned to aggressivelypenetrate and customer reach and adaptability and are working with the motto to serve the finest and the purest food.
Future thoughts and goals
Millet Marvels has planned to expand their business into a franchise model of Millet Marvel Kiosks and Millet Marvels Mithai – a stand alone shop to cater to the increased demand for healthy and gluten free products in and around the city of Hyderabad. Currently, they are working with a turnover of 1 crore but have planned to expand it to 10 crores in next 5 years. The idea of cloud kitchen is planned to be expanded on a cluster basis serving the express foods to consumers across the country. They have dine-in kitchen and kiosks at different places in Hyderabad. Kismathpur, Gacchibowli, Jubilee Hills and Banjara Hills are some of the popular centres currently operating in Hyderabad.The start-up also operates with swiggy for delivering the food products to homes while they are working with Dunzo, an e-commerce brand operating at Hyderabad. Millet Marvels has come up with an innovative ideaof collaborating with hospitals to provide in house kisoks/kitchen to serve the healthy and nutritious millets to in patients at reputed hospitals. To begin with, they have piloted the initiative with Apollo Hospitals.
Millet Marvels is a proud Hyderabadi start-up spearheading the millet mission through the venture and actively participating in millet promotion at national and international levels. It is worthy to note that Millet Marvels was awarded the ‘Best Startup’ during Nutri-Cereal Multi-Stakeholder Convention held at Hyderabad, during September 2021.
B Dayakar Rao is CEO Nutrihub and Principal Scientist, ICAR-IIMR. Veeresh S Wali is Research Manager (Agricultural Economics), ICAR-IIMR and Ranjith Reddy is Chief Business Manager, Nutrihub-IIMR.
Courtesy Press Information Bureau, Srinagar