Your first order from Navane: what arrives and how to start
What comes in the box, how to store it and a simple first-week plan for a family new to small millets.
Why a kilo of foxtail millet costs more than rice
Smaller harvests, more cleaning and a fixed price to farmers: where the money goes in our ₹140 pack.
A kilo of our unpolished foxtail millet costs ₹140. A kilo of ordinary sona masuri rice in a Mysuru shop costs around ₹60 to ₹70. Customers ask about the gap often, and the answer lies mostly in the farm and the cleaning shed.
Millets are grown in small plots, on dry land, mostly by small farmers in Chitradurga and Tumakuru. Yields per acre are lower than for irrigated rice, and there is far less public procurement, so farmers carry more risk. We agree a fixed price with each farmer group before sowing, currently about ₹52 a kilo for foxtail at the farm gate, and pay it whatever the market does later.
Cleaning costs more than people expect. Small millets come with husk, chaff, stones and soil, and the grain is tiny. It passes through a destoner, a stone huller and two sieving rounds, and then is hand-checked on a table. About a fifth of the weight is lost along the way, so 1.25 kg of raw grain becomes 1 kg in the pack.
After that come transport from the farms, packing in sealed food-grade pouches, wages for our 22 staff in Mysuru, shop rent, shipping subsidies and GST. Our margin is about 12 per cent. Buying our 5 kg pack brings the price down to about ₹128 a kilo, and the starter box with five millets works out cheaper than buying the same grains one by one.
