Lakshyraj Yadav didn't expect a school trip to change his direction. Walking through Anganwadi centres near Panchkula, he noticed something quietly unsettling , the children looked smaller than they should.
The data confirmed what his eyes had told him , 28% of children under five in Haryana were stunted, 40% were underweight. One in three children under five in Haryana was not growing the way they should. Two in five weighed less than they needed to.
The government was already distributing daily milk, but milk was perishable, hard to store, and most frustratingly was that many children simply refused to drink it. A well-funded programme was falling short not because of policy, but because of the logistics and palatability. That gap was the starting point.
Six months of home-lab experiments, cold emails to researchers, and one life-changing mentorship later, something real had taken shape. Under Dr. Avula Laxmaiah — the NIN scientist behind Balamrutam, a nutrition programme already feeding millions — Lakshyraj learned the science and began building the product.
After analysing competing products, he made deliberate changes based on real feedback. Defatted soya was removed after testers repeatedly disliked the taste. Peanuts became the primary protein source, while rice syrup and jaggery at exactly 85 Brix created the right chewy texture. Pearl millet and jowar added crunch and structure, and skim milk powder brought in a familiar dairy note.
The final formulation — peanuts, rice syrup, jaggery, millet crisps, coconut powder, and skim milk powder — was simple, local, affordable, and nutritionally dense.
452 Kcal
Energy
13g
Proteins.
4 Months
Shelf Life
When Raju Bhupati — founder of Troo Good and India’s largest millet bar manufacturer — saw the product, he immediately recognised its potential and gave it a name