ICICI Infotech launches solution for the dairy industry

We have created a separate dairy vertical that will focus on providing all types of IT-related services Manoj Kunkalienkar executive director, ICICI Infotech

ICICI Infotech has launched dbizpro, a multilingual dairy management solution for milk and dairy processing units. This software helps automate the entire dairy supply chain from cattle feed and milk collection at the village-level (dairy co-operative societies) to chilling and processing centres. It has already been implemented at two milk co-operatives in Maharashtra—Jalgaon Co-operative Milk Union and Rajarambapu Patil Milk Union at Islampur in Sangli District.

India is the largest milk producer in the world. As per ICICI Infotech’s estimates, the organised dairy industry is worth Rs 14,500 crore ($3 billion) and is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 13 percent, to reach Rs 24,000 crore ($5 billion) by 2005. Another factor favouring India is the diminishing importance of Europe as a key exporter of dairy products with the reduction in subsidies under the WTO regime. This is likely to give India, which offers no subsidies and has competitive milk producers, a chance to export its dairy products.

Said Manoj Kunkalienkar, executive director, ICICI Infotech, “India is the world’s largest producer of milk with over 11 million farmers associated with the dairy industry. To leverage this opportunity, we have created a separate dairy vertical that will focus on providing all types of IT-related services to dairy clients including software, hardware, networking, mailing and system integration-related requirements.”

dbizpro has been specifically developed for the Indian dairy industry and has a customised local language interface. The product integrates functional areas of the dairy business such as milk procurement, production, sales and distribution, plant maintenance, purchase and inventory control, HR & payroll, financial accounting, costing, asset accounting, chilling centre operations and cattle feed plant operations. In addition to the enterprise automation module, it provides an optimisation module for deciding low-cost cattle feed composition and the most profitable dairy product-mix. The company also provides automatic milk collection systems (AMCS) for village-level collection centres or dairy co-operative societies. AMCS consist of components such as a PC, dot matrix printer, weighing scale, digital display unit, procurement and accounting software and a UPS unit. It has been said that Indian software firms have to look at being leaders in the local market before tapping global markets. ICICI Infotech’s foray into a relatively unknown vertical shows that huge business opportunities can be exploited even in India.