Satish Kumar T, CMD, Milky Mist Dairy Food, in fireside chat with Raghuvir Srinivasan, Editor, thehindu businessline. | Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH

On stage at the 5th edition of businessline MSME Growth Conclave 2026 in Bengaluru, businessline Editor Raghuvir Srinivasan introduced Satish Kumar T with a smile. Erode may be among Tamil Nadu’s hotter districts, he said, but sitting across him was one of its coolest entrepreneurs.

Dressed in a dark suit and speaking with measured gestures, the Chairman & Managing Director of Milky Mist Dairy Food looked back at a journey that began far away from automated plants, global technology and IPO discussions.

“Thirty five years ago, I was travelling in the truck as a 15-year-old boy with not much ambition,” Kumar recalled. Coming from a farming family, he joined his father’s milk trading business. But the teenager wanted to move a largely unorganised business towards an organised model.

Paneer story

That search led him to paneer — a product that had little presence in South Indian kitchens then. Srinivasan recalled that while growing up in Tamil Nadu, paneer meant paneer soda (rose water), not the cottage cheese familiar today. Kumar’s experiments eventually became a business. “I will talk to paneer and milk,” he quipped, describing his attachment to the product.

But building a brand was never part of the original plan. When a supermarket buyer told him she could not sell his paneer without a brand name, Kumar said he was unsure what branding even meant. He went to a browsing centre, searched for options using Yahoo (the search engine giant of those days) and picked Milky Mist from the names shortlisted.

Years later, the questions are very different. From creating a brand, Kumar is now preparing Milky Mist for its next stage of growth. The expansion journey involved difficult capital decisions. Kumar recalled that when the company’s topline was about ₹200 crore and debt was around ₹20 crore, it decided to borrow nearly ₹480 crore to build capacity.

As the company heads towards an IPO soon, he said investors and analysts often question the scale of investments and return ratios. “Personally, I am a very, very conservative person. When it comes to my business, I don’t care about the investment,” said Kumar, explaining his willingness to back the right technology.

The investments were not limited to manufacturing. When Srinivasan observed that Milky Mist could also be called a transport company because of its truck fleet and cold chain assets, Kumar said owning the cold chain was critical. “This is farm to fork, everything is in our hand,” he said.

His advice to entrepreneurs was to build credibility early. Transparent transactions and clean books, he said, helped the company earn the confidence of bankers.

Kumar also pushed back against the idea that companies must move to metros to grow. His office remains above the factory in Perundurai, Erode. Twelve minutes is all it takes for him to travel from the factory to his home and vice versa, sending the Bengaluru audience into peals of laughter and self-reflection.

Asked about competition, he had an unexpected answer. “Meat and chicken are my competitors,” said Kumar, pointing to the larger consumption opportunity ahead.

From a teenager in a milk truck to an entrepreneur taking an Erode-born company towards public markets, Kumar’s story remained about building scale without moving away from his roots.

Published on June 25, 2026