PMFME Scheme Transforms Anita Dash into a Food Processing Entrepreneur, Highlighting the Crucial Role of Women in India’s Rural Dairy Economy.
The Indian dairy sector serves as a vital economic engine and a major source of rural employment, with over 70% of its workforce being women. This demographic reality positions dairy farming as a key catalyst for women’s empowerment, fostering livelihood security and strengthening nutrition across grassroots communities. Crucially, the sector has evolved beyond simple production, increasingly becoming a launchpad for female entrepreneurs to scale small milk units into sustainable, growth-oriented businesses through strategic institutional support.
An exemplary case of this transformation is Anita Dash from Balasore, Odisha. Starting her journey in 2012 with just a single cow, she steadily grew her operation to 60 cows by 2015, supplying fresh milk to local households. When she faced challenges due to irregular milk supply from other farmers, Dash demonstrated entrepreneurial innovation: she taught herself to process milk into high-value products like paneer, khoya, and dahi rasagolla using online tutorials. The purity and quality of these value-added dairy products allowed her business to recover and thrive.
Dash formalized her venture in 2021 by establishing Krishna Dairy, focusing on packaged milk and dairy products. Seeking further expansion, she secured crucial financial backing through the PM Formalization of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME) scheme. Facilitated by Palladium (the State Project Management Unit for Odisha), she obtained a bank loan of ₹26.8 lakhs, enabling her to purchase advanced machinery. This capital injection boosted her daily production capacity to 5 quintals and dramatically increased her profitability.
The support transformed her bottom line: Dash now generates a daily profit of ₹10,000, with monthly profits ranging between ₹3–4 lakhs (approximately $36,000 to $48,000 USD annually), scaling her business to a ₹2 crore annual enterprise. Her success is part of a wider impact achieved by the PMFME scheme, which aims to formalize and scale micro food processing enterprises. The scheme has extended credit-linked support to over 1,700 enterprises and trained more than 9,300 beneficiaries in entrepreneurship, with 35% of all PMFME beneficiaries being women.
Ultimately, this initiative successfully mobilizes local entrepreneurs, providing credit, modern equipment, and training to boost production efficiency and market access. As noted by Shri Surya Kanta Behera (District Industries Centre) and Amit Patjoshi (CEO, Palladium India), programs like PMFME are unlocking new possibilities for small food processors, enabling them to move “from subsistence to success,” create jobs, and ensure long-term sustainability by promoting valuable diversification within the rural dairy economy.
Source: Find the complete success story and details of the PMFME scheme at The CSR Universe.
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