Defocused food store shelf with pre-packaged food, blurred
| Photo Credit:
Thomas Faull
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which works under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has assured food startups, including millet startups, that they could get licences in a day.
“The FSSAI is regulating and facilitating trade and offering advise to them, rather than enforce rules based on premises or other conditions,” Balu Naik, Deputy Director of FSSAI, has said.
Addressing the Millet Stakeholders Summit 2025 at T-Hub here on Thursday, Naik said the licensing process was a very simple, not tedious process. “You need not roam around the offices to wait for the approval. Everything is online, and you can potentially get your license immediately if it’s for a basic category like proprietary food and you have the proper documents,” he said.
“You can call the FSSAI office to inquire about the required documents for your specific category. If your licence is pending, even after a few days, you can raise the issue online with FSSAI,” he said.
On the concerns around ‘inspections’, he made it clear that “nobody can inspect your premise without the central or the state permission”.
Free training programmes
Naik said that the FSSAI has a mandate to train one lakh members a year in every State.
“These training programmes are free of cost. You can get this training at the State level. If you require separate training on regulatory issues for a group of more than 30 members, the FSSAI can depute an officer to your premises free of cost to conduct this training,” he said.
The conference was organised by Nutrihub, an exclusive incubator set up by the Indian Institute of Millets Research for (IIMR) for millet startups, to provide a platform for stakeholders in the millet ecosystem.
Over 300 delegates, including startup representatives, scientists and investors, attended the conference, which discussed topics such as building scalable, sustainable agri-business; and the role of incubators, accelerators, and market enablers.
Nutrihub Chief Executive Officer B Dayakar Rao felt that the incubator would like to replicate the model in the Northern, Western and Eastern regions.
“We never said that we will offer free or subsidised services for startups. Everything comes at a price. We charged them reasonable fee for offering services at the incubator,” he said.
He said that millets couldn’t replace cereals. As the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), millets can replace one-third of the regular food intake.
Published on May 15, 2025
