From IIT Labs to 3.5 Million Farmers – #SankalpChangemakers features Ranjith Mukundan and Ravi Shiroor, Co-Founders of Stellapps
The Digital Revolution That Started in a Cow Shed
In the sprawling corridors of IIT Madras in 2011, two engineers were wrestling with a problem that seemed worlds away from silicon chips and algorithms. How do you bring transparency, quality, and fair pricing to an industry that feeds a billion people but still operates largely on trust, tradition, and handwritten ledgers?
Ranjith Mukundan and Ravi Shiroor weren’t your typical tech entrepreneurs chasing the next app or platform. They were looking at India’s ₹5 lakh crore dairy industry—the largest in the world—and seeing inefficiency at every step of the supply chain. Farmers selling milk without knowing its exact quality. Processors struggling with adulteration. Cold chains breaking down. Payments delayed for weeks.
What emerged from their IIT Madras incubation was Stellapps—a company that would eventually digitize the journey of 14 million liters of milk every single day.
The Invisible Infrastructure of India’s White Revolution
India produces more milk than any other country, yet the industry that employs over 80 million farmers remained largely analog. Picture this: a farmer in rural Karnataka milks her cows at dawn, pours the milk into aluminum cans, and waits for a local collector who tests quality with rudimentary methods, often determining price based on visual inspection and basic taste tests.
By the time that milk reaches urban consumers, it has passed through multiple hands, with little traceability about its origin, journey, or quality parameters. Farmers often receive payments weeks later, with no transparency about how their milk was valued against quality metrics.
This opacity wasn’t just inefficient—it was economically devastating for the farmers who form the backbone of India’s dairy ecosystem. Most operated without access to formal banking, veterinary care, or data about their own productivity.
Engineering Trust, One Sensor at a Time
Stellapps approached this challenge with a fundamentally different philosophy: what if every drop of milk could tell its story?
Their IoT and cloud-based solutions create what they call “end-to-end traceability”—a digital nervous system for the dairy supply chain. At village collection centers, farmers pour their milk into smart analyzers that instantly measure fat content, protein levels, and quality parameters. The data flows in real-time to processors, ensuring immediate, transparent pricing.
But the technology goes deeper than just measurement. Stellapps has built an integrated ecosystem of value-added services that transform the entire farmer experience:
- Direct beneficiary banking that brings previously unbanked farmers into the formal economy
- Veterinary care networks providing timely animal health services
- Cattle insurance protecting farmers’ primary assets
- Nutrition advisory optimizing feed for better milk production
- Credit access based on alternative scoring using milk production data
- Digital payments ensuring immediate, transparent transactions
Scale That Defies Imagination
The numbers behind Stellapps’ impact are staggering. The company currently serves 3.5 million farmers across 42,000 villages, digitizing more than 14 million liters of milk flow daily with support from 250+ dairy processors across 17 Indian states.
To put this in perspective: every day, Stellapps processes more milk than many countries produce in a month. Every transaction creates a data point that helps farmers optimize their operations and processors ensure quality.
Their client roster reads like a who’s who of India’s dairy industry: Varun Beverages, Paras, Heritage Foods, Sonai, Saras, Creamline, Karnataka Milk Federation, Comfed, and Milma—companies that collectively serve millions of consumers across the country.
The Data-Driven Transformation
What makes Stellapps unique isn’t just their technology—it’s how they’ve used data to rewrite the economics of dairy farming. Their advanced analytics and artificial intelligence don’t just track milk; they provide actionable insights that enable farmers to enhance productivity, quality, and profitability.
The results speak for themselves:
- 39% increase in cattle productivity
- 65% increase in farmer profitability
- 160% higher market realization for quality milk
- 74% of registered farmers are women, emphasizing gender equality in agricultural technology
- 25% reduction in energy consumption
- 55% reduction in carbon emissions
Perhaps most significantly, Stellapps has brought financial inclusion to a traditionally excluded population. By using milk production data to create alternative credit scores, they’ve enabled thousands of farmers to access formal banking and credit services for the first time.
Building the Future of Food Traceability
The company’s recent $26 million Series C funding round signals their next phase of growth. The round, which included participation from existing investors like Blume Ventures, Omnivore, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDH Farmfit Fund, 500 Startups, and Blue Ashva Capital, along with new investor Miledeep Capital and debt funding from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), will accelerate their mooMark business.
mooMark represents Stellapps’ evolution into contract manufacturing and private-labeled dairy products—high-quality, value-added dairy products that are both sustainable and completely traceable from farm to consumer. It’s a vision where every carton of milk or block of cheese carries a digital passport documenting its entire journey.
The investor backing is impressive: Celesta Capital, Nutreco, Qualcomm Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Venture Highway, Binny Bansal, BEENEXT, and Arun Seed have all recognized the transformative potential of digitizing India’s dairy supply chain.
Beyond Technology: Transforming Lives
While the technology is sophisticated, the impact is profoundly human. In villages across India, farmers who once waited weeks for payments now receive instant digital transfers. Women who were excluded from formal banking now have credit scores based on their dairy productivity. Families who lost cattle to preventable diseases now have access to timely veterinary care.
Stellapps has proven that agricultural technology isn’t just about increasing yields—it’s about creating dignity, transparency, and economic opportunity for millions of people who feed the nation.
The Ripple Effects
The environmental impact extends far beyond individual farms. By optimizing feed, improving cattle health, and reducing waste in the supply chain, Stellapps’ solutions contribute to more sustainable dairy production. The 55% reduction in carbon emissions across their network represents millions of tons of CO2 prevented from entering the atmosphere.
Their approach also strengthens food security by ensuring higher quality milk reaches consumers while providing farmers with data-driven insights to improve productivity. In a country where malnutrition remains a challenge, every improvement in dairy efficiency has multiplier effects on public health.
What This Means for India’s Agricultural Future
Stellapps represents something larger than a successful startup—it’s a blueprint for how technology can transform traditional industries without displacing the people who depend on them. By building systems that empower rather than replace farmers, they’ve shown that digital transformation can be inclusive and equitable.
Their model is being watched closely across agricultural technology circles, not just in India but globally. How do you digitize supply chains that employ hundreds of millions of people? How do you introduce transparency without destroying traditional relationships? How do you use data to empower rather than exploit?
The answers emerging from Stellapps’ work suggest that the future of agricultural technology lies not in replacing human judgment but in augmenting it with real-time data, transparent systems, and inclusive financial services.
The Long Pour
From an IIT Madras lab to 42,000 villages, Stellapps has shown that the most sophisticated technology can serve the most fundamental human needs. Every sensor they deploy, every data point they collect, every digital payment they facilitate brings India’s dairy farmers closer to economic justice and environmental sustainability.
In a world where technology often seems to widen inequality, Stellapps offers a different narrative—one where IoT sensors and artificial intelligence become tools for rural empowerment, where data creates transparency rather than surveillance, and where innovation serves not just efficiency but dignity.
The white revolution that transformed India into the world’s largest milk producer was built on cooperative principles and appropriate technology. Stellapps is writing the next chapter—one where every farmer has access to the same quality data and financial services that drive modern businesses, and every consumer can trace their food back to its source.
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