Experienced entrepreneurs often say that starting a business doesn’t demand a lot of money or space, just strong willpower. 26-year-old Palak Arora is living proof of that. A food engineer by profession, Palak launched a successful venture selling millet-based products, and now earns lakhs of rupees every month. Her initiative has also created opportunities for many farmers, who have joined her business and are reaping significant benefits.
Today, Palak Arora runs a successful food brand called 'Millium', which offers a range of healthy, millet-based products. What began on her rooftop as a small experiment has now grown into a fully operational production unit in Faridabad.
Looking back at Palak's journey, this business wasn't started on a large scale. It began during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. At that time, she was a third-year student at the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM). It all began when Palak Arora started searching for healthy food options for herself. What started as a personal need soon evolved into a larger mission, to improve the food system and uplift the lives of rural communities through sustainable, millet-based products.
Palak shared that her journey began while searching online for easy-to-make, healthy food options that could boost immunity. However, she found that while millets were widely recognized for their nutritional value, the market only offered raw grains or coarse flour. There were hardly any ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat millet products available. This gap inspired her to take action.
Palak has good knowledge of food technology and also holds an FSSC 22000 Lead Auditor certification. So, she knew that millets need to be processed in a special way.
Wheat can be easily converted into flour and used, but not millets. They need to be soaked, sprouted, dried, or roasted. This destroys the anti-nutrients present in millets and increases their nutritional value. This was largely not happening in the Indian market. So, people were buying raw millets or unprocessed flour, which was difficult to use.
During the lockdown, the college laboratory was closed. So, she used her family's rooftop in Faridabad. She adopted a home-based food processing method. She bought solar dryers to slowly dry the food and preserve its nutrients. She also bought blenders to mix the ingredients well, along with grinding machines. Her mother helped her in this work.
Palak wanted to make millet meals that were healthy and could be cooked in 10 minutes or less. First, she made sprouted millet porridge, vegetable-stuffed idlis, and Punjabi-style chillas (savory pancakes). Each recipe was tested over a hundred times with friends and family for taste and nutrition. By June 2022, Palak successfully launched Millium.
Palak's Millium now includes over 15 products like millet soup, millet noodles and pasta, millet poha, and pancake mix. They are priced from Rs 55 to Rs 640, making Millium accessible to all kinds of people. Today, Palak earns Rs 3 lakh per month from her millet business. She works by combining old methods and new science. This is also benefiting farmers who had almost abandoned millet farming.