A millet roti machine wins a design patent — an academia-industry collaboration to cut the price to 40,000 rupees and bring it into homes

In August 2026, Hyderabad's VNRVJIET and the Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) obtained a design patent for a machine that automatically cooks millet roti. The aim is to use a machine to cut the hassle of eating millets at home. For Japanese food and OEM companies working with dried vegetables, powders, or millets, this offers a clue to how the entry point of home cooking in India is being mechanized. The amounts below are given as of September 2026, at ₹1 ≈ ¥1.66.

The starting point: which machine won the patent

According to fnbnews, VNRVJIET (Hyderabad) and IIMR obtained a design patent for a machine that automatically shapes and cooks millet roti. Against existing similar models priced at 150,000 rupees (about 250,000 yen), this machine targets a price of about 40,000 rupees (about 66,000 yen). IIMR's incubation center, NUTRI-Hub, contributed 300,000 rupees (about 500,000 yen) toward the prototyping and design. Pranavanand Satyamurthy, head of VNRVJIET's Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering department who led the development, said that "even as interest in millet-based food grows, the effort and time it takes have been the biggest barrier to making it a daily habit," explaining that as more young people choose health-conscious diets, this patented machine aims to bring convenience to millet consumption while also advancing domestic food processing technology.

Background: how to cut the hassle of eating millets at home

In India, the spread of millets has been driven largely by IIMR. However, millet dough is hard to work with, and cooking it into roti takes effort. That makes it a heavy burden to prepare every day at home, and has been a reason it struggles to become part of the daily table. The design philosophy behind this project is to mechanize this cooking step through an academia-industry partnership and bring the price down to a level households can afford.

What was the bottleneck

What Satyamurthy pointed to was the labor and time involved in making millet roti. Unlike wheat roti, millet dough takes skill to handle. If it assumes manual preparation, even health-conscious households that want to choose millets struggle to keep it up. If a machine takes over shaping and cooking, this burden goes down.

How far can the price come down

The existing model's price of 150,000 rupees (about 250,000 yen) is not a price an ordinary household would pay for everyday cooking. If it can be brought down to the target of about 40,000 rupees (about 66,000 yen), the buyer base would widen from commercial use to households. NUTRI-Hub's 300,000 rupees (about 500,000 yen) in support went toward the prototyping and design needed to make this price feasible. NUTRI-Hub, IIMR's incubation center, played the role of concentrating academic and industry funding at the prototype stage, refining the design before mass production.

How it is being received locally and in the industry

fnbnews reported that the development team identified effort and time as what blocks millets from becoming an everyday food, and is trying to break through that with a machine priced down for households. The design patent was granted as of August 25, 2026, and is aimed not at commercial use but at ordinary households. A design that brings the mechanism for automating shaping and cooking down to a price households can afford was treated as the key point in the reporting. No specific production capacity figures were given in the article.

Implications for Japanese companies: how to capture the entry point of home cooking

The move to bring millets into homes via a machine also touches food businesses handling millets themselves. Read alongside a D2C brand built around traditional foods Anveshan's expansion and an investment in iD Fresh Food, which cuts effort through pre-prepared ingredients, it becomes clear that Indian consumers want both health and less hassle at the same time. Japanese food and millet OEM companies have room to make proposals that go beyond raw ingredients, into forms that reduce the effort of cooking as well.

Ripple effect on the market: cooking appliances and millet foods overlap

If cooking effort goes down, the frequency of using millets at home rises, feeding through into demand for processed foods made with millets. Much like health-focused D2C snacks for middle-aged and older consumers, millets are an ingredient whose uses can easily expand, and mechanizing home cooking supports that broader base.

Practical information and related links

• Anveshan's D2C growth where traditional food meets health
• KisaanSay, a farm-direct D2C brand partnering with farmers
• How front-of-pack warning labels are changing food labeling in India

Summary: capture shelf space with a proposal that cuts effort

The design patent for the millet roti machine shows that the key to getting health-conscious ingredients to stick in the home lies in the effort of cooking. Japanese companies handling millets or dried foods in India should, beyond simply supplying raw ingredients, design products around forms that skip pre-preparation or cooking steps, and start the search for a local partner from a proposal that reduces households' cooking burden.

Sources

• fnbnews"VNRVJIET, IIMR secure design patent for millet roti-making machine"