Grains & Millets

Long before quinoa or oats found their way into Indian pantries, millets were what a Karnataka table looked like. Ragi mudde in the evenings, foxtail rice on festival days, kodo kanji for a queasy stomach — these were the grains our grandparents cooked without thinking, the ones the land actually wanted to grow. Somewhere between the Green Revolution and the age of packaged atta, we quietly forgot them.

We began stocking millets at Othla because a handful of small farmers in North Karnataka and Andhra kept asking whether anyone in Bengaluru wanted the good stuff — the varieties they still sowed in the corner of their fields but couldn't sell to the mandi. Foxtail (navane), little millet (samai), kodo (arka), barnyard (oodalu), and pearl-hued proso — each one carries the terroir of where it grew. Our ragi comes from a single farmer collective near Ramanagara, where the red soil and the winter dew give it that particular sweetness that mass-market ragi loses.

Nutritionally the story is well-known now — millets are naturally gluten-free, low on the glycaemic index, and denser in iron, calcium and fibre than any refined grain. In 2023 the United Nations, on India's proposal, celebrated the International Year of Millets. But the reason we stock them isn't the diet trend. It's that they belong here, in this climate, on this soil, in the recipes our region has been quietly refining for three thousand years.

Every millet in this collection is cold-milled in small batches — the flour retains its bran, its aroma, and its natural oils, which is why our ragi hittu smells green when you open the bag. We pack fresh weekly, we don't blend varieties, and we tell you where each one grew. Explore below — every item on this page is something we personally cook with at home.