While most graduates from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) aim for lucrative careers in artificial intelligence, quantitative finance, or SaaS unicorns, two IIT Delhi alumni chose a path far removed from conventional tech circles. By focusing on one of India’s most traditional and unorganized sectors, Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra turned a simple weekend project into Animall Technologies—a digital platform currently valued at approximately ₹565 crore.
Their startup is transforming how millions of dairy farmers across rural India trade livestock, bridging a massive gap in the country’s estimated $250 billion cattle economy.
From Civil Engineering to Solving Rural Challenges
Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra met as hostel roommates while pursuing their B.Tech in Civil Engineering at IIT Delhi, graduating in 2016. After graduation, both built impressive corporate resumes:
- Neetu Yadav worked as a Technology Analyst at Citi before moving to the digital publishing platform Pratilipi as a Product Manager.
- Kirti Jangra built her domain expertise in consulting, working with global firms such as Nomura Consulting and Penguin Random House India.
Despite successful corporate careers, both shared a strong entrepreneurial drive. During discussions about rural livelihood challenges, they recognized a glaring inefficiency: while urban consumers could purchase everything from groceries to real estate with a tap on their smartphones, India’s livestock trade remained heavily reliant on local middlemen, weekly village markets, and word-of-mouth referrals.
The Origin of Animall: A Weekend Project That Scaled Rapidly
In 2019, Neetu and Kirti launched Animall as a weekend venture designed to evaluate whether smartphone penetration in rural India could support a peer-to-peer cattle marketplace.
The core premise was simple: allow dairy farmers to list, evaluate, buy, and sell cows and buffaloes directly through a user-friendly mobile application. However, operationalizing this vision required overcoming deep-rooted behavioral barriers:
- Building Farmer Trust: Convincing rural livestock owners to trust an app for high-value physical transactions required continuous user feedback and interface simplification.
- Accessibility: The team designed the platform specifically for first-time smartphone users, prioritizing simple visual navigation over complex menus.
The strategy yielded remarkable results. Today, Animall reports over 180,000 cattle listings and has connected more than 1 million buyers and sellers, gaining significant venture backing and scaling its valuation to around ₹565 crore.
Redefining Innovation in Agritech
India stands as the world’s largest milk producer, with millions of rural families relying on dairy farming for daily income. Historically, livestock sales involved heavy commission margins paid to intermediaries and long travel distances to local animal fairs (pashu melas).
By establishing a transparent digital ecosystem, Animall standardizes livestock discovery, eliminates predatory middleman pricing, and provides verified sellers direct access to broader buyer networks. The platform proves that groundbreaking innovation does not always demand complex algorithms; frequently, it lies in applying fundamental technology to underserved traditional sectors.
Key Lessons for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
- Domain Agnostic Problem-Solving: Neither founder held formal training in agriculture or animal husbandry. Their engineering background cultivated analytical rigor and scalable thinking—skills applicable across any domain.
- Solving Real-World Problems: High-impact startup opportunities often reside in overlooked traditional markets rather than trendy tech hype cycles.
- Empowering Livelihoods: Purpose-driven platforms that create tangible economic value for grassroots users achieve lasting market retention.
From shared hostel quarters at IIT Delhi to leading a major agritech movement, Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra demonstrate how analytical skill combined with deep market empathy can modernize India’s foundational industries.