The changing urban platter fuels millet entrepreneurs’ dreams Premium

Davalappa Hipparagi from Raichur, who started his company Mr. Millet’ about five years ago, has also seen the demand for his products significantly rise over the years. Mr. Millet, which initially used to produce 50-100 pounds of millet breads per day, today makes about 700-1000 pounds of bread, around 100kg of cookies and 100 kg of rusks daily, all out of millet, per day and supply them in the Kalyana Karnataka region. With more demand for millet products coming in from urban centres, Hipparagi and his team travel to Bengaluru every weekend and are actively considering stepping up their activities in the city.

Gautam Raikar, proprietor at Liki Foods, which makes millet-based ice creams, snacks and other food products, opened his first outlet in Malleshwaram about 1.5 years ago. Raikar started it out slow with a manufacturing unit in Yelachenahalli with a production capacity of 20,000 litres a month. But with increased demand over the years, collaboration potential with larger businesses, and export enquiries from abroad, Raikar sees the demand going up to about 50,000 litres daily. He is now in the process of scaling up his business and opening a larger facility in a couple of months.

Davalappa Hipparagi from Raichur, who started his company Mr. Millet’ about five years ago, has also seen the demand for his products significantly rise over the years. Mr. Millet, which initially used to produce 50-100 pounds of millet breads per day, today makes about 700-1000 pounds of bread, around 100kg of cookies and 100 kg of rusks daily, all out of millet, per day and supply them in the Kalyana Karnataka region. With more demand for millet products coming in from urban centres, Hipparagi and his team travel to Bengaluru every weekend and are actively considering stepping up their activities in the city.

With the humble millets, once a staple food at many households in Karnataka, lately assuming the form of a “superfood” - particularly in urban pockets - and replacing the rice and wheat items on the platter, entrepreneurs across the state are flocking the space to introduce newer varieties of millet products to satisfy the cravings of the health-conscious city dweller. From ice creams to smoothies, cookies to muffins and pastas to pizzas, the consumer now has a variety of millet options to pick from, be it a snack, drink, main course or dessert.

At the three-day ‘International Trade Fair Organics and Millets 2025 held in Bengaluru earlier this year, as many as 36 millet start-ups participated. Raikar’s Liki Foods was one of them. Liki’s flagship product is non-dairy vegan millet ice cream, which is manufactured in-house.

“We use millet milk with some fruits and a little bit of sugar. The sugar is around 7-8%  and it is a zero-cholesterol product. These are all lab-tested products and we don’t add artificial flavours or colours,” says Raikar. Ragi (finger millet), jola (sorghum), Navane (foxtail millet), and sajje (pearl millet) are used to make Liki’s products which also include bread, rusk, cookies, shakes, smoothies, sandwiches, pasta and pizza, all made of millets.

According to Raikar, ‘guava with chilli powder’ ice cream has been a big hit. Millet pizza is another crowd favourite. While all the products have been introduced after more than three years of research and development, Raikar notes that he had not initially expected the kind of demand he is seeing today.

“We started off at a very small scale. But now that we are seeing increasing demand, we are planning to scale it up in another couple of months. We have tied up with various companies that cater to events and functions. But we cannot fulfil the demand as of now. We didn’t know it would have this much demand,” says Raikar.