Milky Mist Dairy Food's IPO was 2.29x oversubscribed, as of 4pm on its second day of subscription. The issue, which will enter its third day of subscription, is priced at ₹133–₹140 per share and totals up to ₹1,553 crore, split between a ₹1,428 crore fresh issue and a ₹125 crore offer for sale by its two promoters. On Monday, prior to its IPO opening, the company had raised ₹465.30 crore from anchor investors.
The Erode (Tamil Nadu) based company has built its pitch around being India's fastest-growing large packaged food company and the country's leading private paneer brand. The numbers back up the growth story. They also surface a business that remains geographically concentrated, meaningfully leveraged, and dependent on a single manufacturing site.
Milky Mist makes value-added dairy products (VADPs)- paneer, cheese, curd, butter, ghee, yogurt, ice cream, UHT long-shelf-life products, and adjacent categories like frozen foods, ready-to-eat items and chocolates, sold under its namesake umbrella brand and smaller labels such as SmartChef, Capella, Misty Lite, Briyas and Asal. Its core brand alone accounted for 97.34% of FY26 revenue. The company runs 22 product categories and 640 SKUs out of one manufacturing facility in Perundurai, Erode district, Tamil Nadu, which is US FDA-approved and was built out with automated paneer, cheese and UHT lines.
The company frames its positioning as closer to an FMCG business than a conventional dairy one; leaning on premium pricing, branded distribution and gross margins rather than commodity milk economics. It sources raw milk directly from 74,654 farmers across 25 districts in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, all within roughly 400 kilometres of the plant, cutting out intermediaries and paying farmers every seven to ten days. It runs its own cold-chain logistics- 63 milk vans, 282 refrigerated trucks and 34 ambient trucks, and had 4,001 distributors across 22 states and 5 union territories as of March 2026.
Founders Sathishkumar T (Chairman and Managing Director) and Anitha S (Whole-time Director) bring a combined five decades in the dairy and food business. CEO Dr. K Rathnam previously worked at Heinz India and ran the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union- the body behind Amul.
The company's market-share claims, all sourced from a report it commissioned itself from Lattice Technologies (1Lattice), are specific by category rather than blanket. Milky Mist says it is the largest private packaged paneer brand in India by value, at roughly 19% share in FY26. In cheese, its position is regional: largest private brand in South India (~12% of the region's organised market) but only third nationally among private players (~5%). In curd, it holds about 7% of South India's organised market. In yogurt, it's among the top two private brands nationally at roughly 13%, and inside that, its Greek yogurt line; a smaller but fast-growing bet which commands an outsized 35–40% of that niche category. The company also says its paneer and curd are priced 10–30% above the average of large Indian brands, and that this pricing power drove the highest realisation per litre of milk among listed peers, at roughly ₹77.79 in FY26.
Revenue from operations grew from ₹1,821.60 crore in FY24 to ₹3,138.36 crore in FY26; a compound growth rate north of 31% over two years. Profitability improved faster than revenue: EBITDA margin moved from 12.21% to 13.87%, and PAT margin nearly quadrupled from 1.07% to 4.05%, taking profit after tax from ₹19.44 crore to ₹127 crore. Return on equity jumped sharply, from 7.14% in FY24 to 32.12% in FY26, and return on capital employed improved from 8.14% to 11.73%.
The other side of that growth has been debt-funded capacity building. Total borrowings rose from ₹1,036.72 crore in FY24 to ₹1,671.85 crore in FY26, keeping the debt-to-equity ratio elevated at 3.61x, even after some improvement from 4.20x in FY25. One of the company's trademarks has been pledged as loan security. A meaningful share of the fresh issue; nearly ₹500 crore, is earmarked simply to repay or prepay this existing debt, with the rest going toward expanding the Perundurai facility and deploying visi-coolers, ice cream freezers and chocolate coolers into the trade.
On valuation, Milky Mist's return on net worth of 33.60% in FY26 already exceeds most of the seven listed peers it has picked for comparison- Bikaji Foods, Britannia, Dodla Dairy, Hatsun Agro, Nestlé India, Parag Milk Foods and Tata Consumer Products, with only Nestlé (67.85%) and Britannia (49.61%) ahead of it. Peer P/E multiples on the RHP's own comparison range from Parag Milk Foods at 21.28x to Nestlé at 79.76x, with the peer average sitting at 52.56x.
A few concentration risks sit underneath the growth numbers. South India generated 69.23% of FY26 revenue, and Tamil Nadu alone supplied 94.51% of the company's raw milk- meaning any regional disruption, policy shift, or supply shock in one state carries outsized weight. The company runs all its manufacturing out of a single Perundurai facility with no alternate site, and three product categories- paneer, cheese and curd; together account for 59.05% of revenue.
The audit trail carries some flags too. Statutory auditors noted unreconciled physical verification of about 3% of gross block in FY26, inventory figures that didn't match bank quarterly returns by ₹26.45 crore in FY26 and ₹22.5 crore in FY25, and incomplete internal audit coverage flagged in consecutive years. Separately, the company carries contingent liabilities of ₹229 crore, dominated by ₹194.87 crore in EPCG duty-saved exposure tied to export obligations, plus three distinct GST demand orders raised between FY24 and FY26, several of which remain under appeal. Employee attrition, while improving, was still 29.08% in FY26, and headcount fell from 1,694 employees in FY24 to 1,317 in FY26 even as revenue grew.
The company has also flagged, in its own risk factors, that its market-share and industry figures rest on a report it paid for itself; standard practice in Indian IPOs, but worth keeping in mind when reading the leadership claims above.
Promoters currently hold 93% of the company between themselves and promoter-group entities, and the IPO will see them sell down a combined ₹125 crore through the offer for sale- a relatively small slice of their holding, with the bulk of new capital coming from the fresh issue rather than an exit.
This AI-generated analysis, based on RHP/DRHP information, is for informational purposes only. Investors should conduct due diligence and consult financial advisors before making investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and all investments carry inherent risks including potential loss of principal.
