Entrepreneurship in Millets in India
Sunday, May 31st 2020. 3 PM to 4 PM (Indian Std Time)
Over the past few years the demand for millet based products has sky rocketed. Many amongst us have started moving to millet based diets seeking better sources for our nutritional requirements. As discussed in second and fifth sessions, this nutrition is primarily found in the bran layer of these grains. As discussed in the fourth and eighth sessions, this poses a challenge when it comes to designing the process flow to make these grains edible. The booming millet sector therefore, offers a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to build the market leader in this nascent sector.
In this session, we shall go over some of the basic factors that entrepreneurs need to consider when making decisions regarding starting or running an enterprise in the millet value chain. We shall briefly touch upon market trends and projections for the Indian markets.
Anchor/Moderator: Mr. Raman Ahuja,
Mr Raman Ahuja is currently working with FAO and IFAD millet value chain. Raman has a background in the corporate sector where he worked with Hindustan Unilever for 15 years in FMCG and in food and Agri. Thereafter (2005-2011), he built Sunil Bharti Mittal’s venture – FieldFresh Foods DelMonte. In the last 10 years, he has been consulting with Governments, Multilateral Agencies such as World Bank IFAD and FAO on their projects in India. He is currently working with MoACFW, GoI to develop a strategy on millets (nutri-cereals) for the Govt of India.
Speaker: Dr. Dwiji Guru
Dwiji is a serial entrepreneur, technology developer, researcher, and advocate for sustainable food systems. Dwiji consult for and work with various stakeholders – from farmers to consumers – on dry land farming, processing, specializing in various aspects of millets spanning a broad spectrum from cultivation practices, processing, cooking to nutrition.
Participate in the webinar
Please register by filling out this form.
Please note that registration closes at 10 AM of the day of the webinar. In case you are reading this after the registration closed, you can still participate by joining us on the YouTube Livestream.
We request all registrants to please check their email for the link to join the webinar session. Do join the webinar early – we have had an overwhelming response with 530+ registrations so far. The webinar technology platform license allows for limited attendees only. So in case you receive a message that the webinar is full, please join us through the YouTube livestream (details below). Volunteers shall be the watching the Q&A section of the webinar platform and the comments section of YouTube Livestream and relaying questions and comments to the moderator and speaker.
Discuss
Know Millets, Telegram channel and discussion group. Please join the Telegram channel to receive regular updates about the webinars and other millet related information. An associated discussion group has also been set up to provide a platform for those looking to discuss about millets.
View Livestream, recordings
The sessions shall be Live streamed on YouTube. Please visit (and subscribe to !) the RRA network YouTube channel. Recordings of completed sessions are also posted there.
Previous sessions in KMW 2020
- May 4th – Community centric approach – cultivation, processing, consumption
- May 7th – Cooking Characteristics & insights on millet dishes
- May 10th – Millets and Agro-bio, food, and nutritional diversity – past, present and future
- May 13th – Millet Processing – Principles, Techniques and Challenges
- May 16th – Grain characteristics- structural, nutritional & storage
- May 19th – The ecological and cultural value of millets – who grew and continue to; how and why do they continue
- May 22nd – Millet cultivation – choice of crop and seeds, practices to improve quality of crop, perspectives of yield and productivity
- May 25th – Intro to Mechanized Processing of millets – scale, machines & skill requirements
- May 28th – Quality assessment and consumer price concerns regarding staple forms of millets
The Millet Foundation 
These articles are really helpful and I feel millets should be added to every person’s diet. I have started adding true elements jowar flakes in my diet as breakfast and it’s really healthy and helpful.
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Very happy that the articles have been useful to you. And happy to hear that you have been successfully changing your diet by including millets and are finding it beneficial !
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Sorry for being vague.
As I understand, millet became unpopular [or was unpopular in the first place!] in India after the Green Revolution, and currently, it is getting mainstreamed these days.
Is there any particular set of movements or organisations which triggered this coming back of millets? If so, when did it all begin?
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Millets were part of the daily diets of a larger section of the population than paddy rice or wheat until very recently. Even to this day, in many communities, one or more millets continue to be part of their staple/diet. Each region and community had their own preferred choice of millets. Various factors have led to the decline of millets in people’s diets – the increasing commercialization of agriculture (yes, the Green Revolution has been an aggravating factor in this regard), the fact that production of wheat and paddy at a large scale required irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides and this leading to booms in steel, cement, engineering, chemical and so many other industries which made the policy makers blind to the destructive costs of the technologies on the planet and the people’s health (GDP will increase, so what if some people are displaced, die due to exposure or every body’s health gets compromised due to reduced nutritional access), the ever increasing scale of agro processing and food production (the Public Distribution System being the largest example of them all), the drudgery involved in cleaning and preparing millets when processed the traditional way (women of the household and/or exploited labour were made to do this work earlier), the overarching faith in technology and whatever comes in shiny packets and advertisements (don’t worry about cooking/food, study for your exams/work for your office deadlines), and so on … many factors can be identified for why millets did not get mainstreamed.
Millets seem to be returning to a small extent, primarily because people are becoming more and more health conscious and are seeking alternatives to bleached (aka polished) paddy rice and wheat. Many different organizations and individuals have worked and are working in this direction in different places. It would be hard – and unfair too, I feel – to single out one or even a few of them.
We have to move towards a more sustainable food system – it is not sufficient to replace bleached paddy rice with bleached millet rice and think that we are better off now. It is a long road ahead…
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Are there any particular set of years and geographical location wherein the millet sector began to rise from the slump in India?
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I am not sure what you referring to sir/madam. I can offer an explanation if you can please expand on you question a little more. thank you !
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