Plant-based startup Pilk/
Delevoping non-dairy milks for the Indian market

Jesse Sam spoke to Kanishk in November, as the company prepares for an exciting launch in the new year.

Thanks for agreeing to speak to us Kanishk. Pilk is a really exciting venture and we’re keen to learn more. But can you start by telling us a bit about yourself: what’s your background and how did you get into the food industry?

So, I’m actually a software engineer by training. I did my undergrad studies in Computer Science over in India, so I didn’t have any background in the food sector before Pilk. But that training gave me a knack — and a passion, I guess — for creating products that have an impact on people’s lives. So I started out by working on a bunch of apps that were aimed at improving society.

So you went from creating mobile apps to engineering food products. How did that happen?

Netflix!

It was October 2019, I was in Bangalore with my now co-founder Abhishek. We were watching a documentary called The Game Changers. It was a really inspiring story about how elite athletes like Novak Djokovic and Virat Kohli have been able to change their lives through changing their eating lifestyle, reaching new heights of strength and endurance. We were completely struck by it and immediately wanted to spread the word right?

But no-one wanted to listen. To other people it was just another documentary; interesting but not that inspiring. So we thought we’d try to set the example for others around us and move to a plant-based diet. We stopped eating meat pretty easily. But we kept getting stuck when it came to alternatives for our teas and coffees. It was especially hard for me because I’m also a big curd fan — I used to have it with a lot of my meals. But I just couldn’t find any alternatives.

So it was that personal experience that led us to notice a gap. We started speaking to other people around us trying to go on the same journey and we thought there was an opportunity there. So we set about trying to create an affordable plant-based milk alternative for the Indian market.

It sounds like you were both really driven by a passion for this problem. But I’m curious to know what your first step was and how your training as an engineer influenced the way you approached this problem.

Yeah, sure. So as I said, we did not have a food background. But we are engineers and we like to solve problems; we wanted to create products.

We saw this as an engineering problem: why are there no good quality, affordable plant-based milk alternatives in India? The ones which we could find were not quite right; the taste was nutty or the texture was slimy; when you tried to mix them with tea or coffee, they were separating out.

So we studied the literature and one of the key issues we uncovered was the structure of plant proteins. They lack the nine essential amino acids that the body requires, so they are incomplete from a nutritional perspective. So that was the first thing. We tried to create a chemical base that actually gave us nutritious milk.

Then we moved onto some of the other problems.We studied soya milk and almond milk and tried to understand why the texture and consistency wasn’t great in tea and coffee. We also discovered some sustainability issues, particularly with almond milk, which can have quite a large carbon footprint.

So in terms of the product you have created — a plant-based milk — can you tell us a bit more about that and how pulses play a role?

Yeah, so from our research we discovered that wholy grain-based milks were never going to give us a complete protein profile. Grains have a limited amount of lysine, which is an amino acid. Pulses do have this but they lack another key amino acid called methionine. But mixing them in a certain ratio can give you a complete protein profile.

We didn’t have laboratories to test this out — it was all theory. So we took our research to food technologists in Mumbai and worked with them for 10 months to create a product that was nutritious and really tasty but could also be used in teas and coffees.

And how far along are you with product development? Are you already in the market?

We have completed product testing and we’re really happy with Pilk! It’s rich in fibre and calcium and has a very creamy texture with a really natural white colouring. It also has really stable performance in ambient temperatures, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, which is an important affordability feature.

We are ready to start selling and we will be marketing directly to consumers, early in January 2022. We are in the process of building a direct-to-consumer platform and we will use Amazon as well as distribute through vegan markets throughout the country.

That’s really exciting. So as you start to scale-up, what’s your production infrastructure like? How are you sourcing raw materials, particularly pulses?

Most of our inputs are sourced domestically. It’s really convenient for us to buy pulses here in India. We were able to find a domestic producer of cowpeas quite easily. Even though he’s 200 miles away from us here in Mumbai, he was able to get us samples within 72-hours of contacting him and we will have a secure supply for future production.

The one thing we are importing is oats, mostly from Canada and Australia. That’s because we couldn’t find the right infrastructure in India to process oats with our desired taste or colour. But apart from that, we have secure domestic supply chains.

Our longer-term ambition is to have our own contracted farmers, growing the crops exclusively for us. That will help improve efficiency and give us greater control over quality assurance.

That makes a lot of sense. So you’re aiming to position Pilk as a popular consumer brand. How would you assess demand in India for plant-based products?

I would say it’s still very nascent. The plant-based dairy market is worth, I would say, around $25 million (USD). That’s tiny compared with $60 billion of the organised dairy market. But we see huge potential for growth. From our consumer outreach and market research in Mumbai and Pune, we’ve found that people are receptive to the idea of a plant-based milk.

There’s also good consumer awareness. A recent study by GFI found that 75 percent of people living in Tier 1 cities — places like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune — who are consuming dairy milk are also quite aware of plant-based milks. And they recognise the health and sustainability benefits of this alternative.

We just have to get the product right: make sure it’s easily accessible, with a good level of choice, tasty and affordable.

That’s really interesting. You touched on affordability. What are the current price differentials between plant-based and dairy milk in India?

Yeah, plant-based is definitely not cheaper than animal-based at the moment. I would say the price difference is around five to six times the price: you can get animal-based milk for around 60 rupees, plant-based is up to 400 rupees.

I would not expect to see a complete substitution in consumers’ behaviour. It’s more likely that they will mix the two; maybe buying it once a week. But we recognise that for mass adoption, we absolutely need to make the product more affordable.

We can move toward greater affordability with lower levels of regulation. For example, dairy milk is taxed quite low, like 5 percent; but for us it's 18 percent — more than three times as much. Also, we think that government regulations around using the word ‘milk’ need to evolve. We can’t use the words milk, curd or yoghurt to describe our products — we have to describe it as a ‘beverage’ or ‘blend’. That can slow down consumer uptake.

As we head into 2022, what are your priorities for Pilk?

We are launching in Mumbai first early in the new year but we are seeing a lot of excitement around the country. People want us to deliver straight to them. So we want to be able to meet that demand Second, we want to develop a complete line up of dairy alternatives: flavoured milk, yoghurt, cheese, curd. So there’s a lot of R&D effort required to achieve that.

Well it certainly sounds like you have your work cut out! Thanks so much for your time Kanishk, great talking to you and all the best for the new year.