By Siddharth Dalmia

In September 2024, I began building Neevika Enterprises. The starting point was a manufacturing opportunity in agro-processing: available raw material, what I saw as limited competition, and demand for processed goods.

Those were the reasons I chose to explore the business. They describe my view at that point in time. Turning that view into a manufacturing unit brings a different set of questions, from the product and site to machinery, finance and operations.

The opportunity I saw

Raw material availability was a reason agro-processing appealed to me. It gave the idea a practical starting point. With chana dal and besan, the connection between the raw material and the finished product was clear.

I also saw what looked like very little competition in the market I was considering. Combined with what I believed was strong demand for processed goods, it made the opportunity worth pursuing.

These were reasons to explore the opportunity. A manufacturing plan still has to connect a product with the people who will buy it, a source of raw material and a workable process. Someone considering a unit today would need to assess those conditions for their own market.

Bringing different kinds of work together

My education and work have taken me through technology, law and business. Before Neevika, my work included legal practice at IndusLaw and presales at Brane Enterprises. Manufacturing brings different parts of that background into a setting where decisions eventually have to work at a physical site.

A layout has to accommodate the process. A machinery discussion has to connect with the product. Documents have to reflect the project being built. The people handling different parts of the work need to be working from the same information.

That connection is part of what makes the manufacturing story worth telling. It gives a concrete setting to questions that can otherwise stay abstract: what the business is making, how it will operate and what has to happen before the next step.

The story beyond the product

For Neevika, chana dal and besan provide the product context. The broader founder story is about the decisions around setting up and building the business.

I want to write about that work in a way that is useful to people considering manufacturing themselves. That means beginning with why I entered it, and then discussing the process in enough detail for someone else to ask better questions about their own project.

The questions around a manufacturing unit

Government schemes and the setup process

Government schemes are one of the subjects I want to cover alongside the manufacturing journey. The useful discussion is about the route from reading about a scheme to understanding how it relates to a particular project.

What does the official guidance actually say? Which requirements apply to the unit? What needs to be documented? Who can clarify a point that is open to interpretation? These questions deserve space in the story.

So do the hurdles. To understand a hurdle, the detail matters: the step involved, what was expected, what happened and how the issue was handled. That is the level at which a founder account can become useful to another person building a unit.

Where AI fits into the conversation

AI is another part of the story I want to explore. Around a manufacturing project, there can be documents to organise, information to compare, questions to prepare and explanations to write.

A practical discussion of AI can start with those tasks. For example, a document can be turned into a first-pass checklist, or a long set of notes into questions for the next conversation. The output still needs to be checked against the source and the actual situation.

The interesting question is where that kind of assistance is useful in real work. A polished summary can help someone read a document, but a decision about a project still needs the relevant facts and the right people involved.

This series begins with the reasons I entered manufacturing. The next subjects are the setup process, government schemes and the place AI can have in the work around a business.

Today, I also work as a freelance Business Consultant with Omnex Consulting. Neevika is part of the wider picture of my work across business, technology and manufacturing.

The aim of this founder story is to make the process easier to discuss. Someone considering a unit may be clear about the product but unsure about the next step. Someone already building one may recognise the questions immediately.

If you are at either stage, which part would you most like to hear about: selecting the business, setting up the unit, understanding government schemes or finding practical uses for AI?