While educational institutions boast of placements, Bengaluru-based Dairy Science College has gone a step further to ensure that its final-year BTech students start earning even while they are learning.
The college, which is Karnataka’s oldest dairy sciences institute, has made its final-year students take up production as well as sale of milk-based value-added products by using its technologies as part of their training under the Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana (READY) of the Centre.
Modern tech
What is coming in handy is modern technologies developed by the college for hygienic and scientific production products like organic ghee, Greek yogurt, lassi, paneer, kulfi, srikand and cold-pressed coconut oil. Production and sale process are carried out by students as their own enterprise under their own brand ‘Utkrushta’ to ensure that they pick up entrepreneurship skills.
“We started the earn-while-learning programme under the new education policy in November. By December 6, they had earned a total profit of over ₹1.25 lakh with the help of seed money of ₹25,000 given by the college,” said Dr. Mahesh Kumar G., their mentor and co-ordinator of READY.
“The top-seller has been organic ghee, which is priced at ₹250 a kg. The students have managed to sell about 1,000 kg in less than a month, and demand for the product is rapidly increasing,” he says.
Dr. Mahesh, who is also Head of Dairy Engineering Division, noted that the idea of making students take up production and sale of these products is not just to get them to earn some money, but to train them as thorough entrepreneurs so that they could set up their own businesses as soon as they step out of college.
Seven tasks
The production process is very systematic, as it is divided into seven separate tasks ranging from procurement of raw materials, quality assurance, cleaning as well as sanitisation of plants and machinery, to marketing and sales. Each group will have to take turns to do all the tasks so that they get experience in all the aspects, including packaging, he explains.
Dr. Mahesh said students’ enterprise is also a means to demonstrate the college’s technologies that can help dairy farmers increase their income. The college also planning to take up training of rural entrepreneurs on utilisation of these technologies.
Prof. A. Sachindra Babu, Dean of Dairy Sciences, said farmers can adopt the technologies developed by the college by forming an FPO (Farmers’ Producers’ Organisation) so that they could take up production and marketing of products in a collective manner. Pointing out that it is dairying that has provided succour to small and marginal farmers in times of agrarian crisis, he stresses the need for strengthening the sector by making it more remunerative through diversification.
Incubation facility
The college has launched an incubation facility to hand-hold budding entrepreneurs in dairy industry to take up mechanised and scientific production of value-added milk-based products, including ghee.
Dr. Mahesh says those under incubation would be provided training right from production to packaging, brand building and marketing. Similarly, those with any concept and proposal regarding dairy technologies could also contact the college for technical help.
