Women suppliers of Shreeja Mahila Milk Producer Company Limited with their milk cans at Kuppam in Chittoor district on Thursday.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
J. Naga Jyothi of Garigachinnepalle in Chittoor district owns 23 cows. Last year, her milk fetched ₹28.3 lakh and the “Best Woman Dairy Farmer 2025” award from the Indian Dairy Association’s (IDA) Andhra Pradesh chapter.G. Cheritha of Debbanahalli, a village in southern Karnataka, stands a rung higher. With 70 cows and 15 employees on her payroll, she generated a milk bill of ₹48 lakh last year, the highest earned by any single member of Shreeja Mahila Milk Producer Company Limited (SMMPCL), the world’s largest women-owned milk enterprise.Headquartered at Tirupati, the cooperative is owned by the very women who supply it, and was promoted by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).Lakhpati DidisWhat started at the foot of the Tirumala hills in 2014 as a small institution with just 27 women pooling their milk has today transformed into a mammoth organisation involving 1.4 lakh women milk suppliers hailing from 5,000 villages spread across the four southern States.While the Union government has formally unveiled the concept of “Lakhpati Didis” (rural women earning more than ₹1 lakh a year) recently, Shreeja has created 29,000 such women over the last 11 years, including Ms. Naga Jyothi and Ms. Cheritha.At a time when the dairy sector is known to yield lower margins and unpaid family labour, these 29,000 Lakhpati Didis took home a collective income of ₹694 crore over the past financial year.Shreeja’s “Lakhpati Didis” received laurels on national platforms from the Union Minister for Animal Husbandry and Dairying S. P. Singh Baghel for their contribution to the rural dairy economy, which also ran concurrently with the Centre’s mission of building three crore Lakhpati Didis across the country.Integrated plantExpanding its vision, Shreeja is now launching an integrated dairy and cattle-feed plant with a huge investment of ₹280 crore on the 47-acre site allotted by the Andhra Pradesh government in Kuppam constituency, represented by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. NDDB executes the project on a turnkey basis for Shreeja.“Shreeja currently supplies around 6 lakh litres of milk every day to New Delhi-based Mother Dairy. Once the plant is operational, we will start making milk powder, butter and ghee, besides generating 200 metric tonnes of cattle feed,” says its chief executive S. R. Thimmappa.As Shreeja is working towards bringing one lakh women into the “Lakhpati Didi” bracket over the next two years, the renewed vision now is to create “Crorepati Didis” by diversifying the procurement basket and widening the credit pipeline. Published - June 04, 2026 04:46 pm IST
