In Kochi’s Kacheripady locality, Nisha Nal Kattitaren begins her day preparing meals for Masalabox, which delivers her food to customers who are unknown to her. Her expertise lies in Kerala cuisine, with appam and duck roast being her biggest hits followed by karimeen elayil pollichathu (fish wrapped and cooked in banana leaf). Kattitaren ends up making at least 20 meals a day, and the number goes up to 50 when she gets a bulk order — once a week on average — through Masalabox. This has turned the home cook into a sought-after chef with a steady income stream.

In Mumbai’s Chembur area, Archana Vohra dishes out 200 meals every day. A participant in MasterChef India, Vohra had mastered the art of cooking in her home kitchen and further honed her skills during her stay in New Jersey, US, where she was supplying tiffins to singletons in her building. In June 2014, she listed with Holachef, a Mumbai-based start-up that connects home chefs with end-consumers. When the Holachef website launched in September 2014, Vohra was supplying 10 meals a day; that number has grown 20 times in just a year.

In a country with limited options for healthy eating-out and an increasing number of working women who are hard-pressed for time to cook, preservative-free home food is now greatly sought after. Hitherto hidden behind kitchens, home chefs are now getting a platform to showcase their meals as well as earn money by tying up with a slew of start-ups that are bridging the gap between home food and empty stomachs.

“We saw a big gap in the market where someone could sell a good selection of interesting and healthy food options and keep the prices affordable. We came to the conclusion that what makes food good is a good chef. And nobody was making the talent available in our kitchens to customers. That’s when we started talking to home chefs to partner with us,” says Prateek Agarwal, founder of Gurgaon-based Bite Club.

Saurabh Saxena, founder-CEO of Mumbai-based Holachef says he realised that an alternative supply could be created by offering a variety of cuisine that was both healthy and tasty. “We thought of getting chefs who are well-versed with certain cuisines, and keeping recipes homely and light, something which can be eaten on a daily basis,” he says.

Big bites, big bucks

Across the country, companies like Holachef, Bite Club, Masalabox and Cyber Chef are investing big bucks into food delivery logistics. While demand seems to be picking up, there were challenges aplenty to get these start-ups going initially.

Bite Club found its chefs through social media. And Holachef took a lot of references from friends and family. “But it was difficult to convince the chefs that the model could work. They had a good grasp over recipes but were restricted to feeding friends and family. We managed to convince some of them and then word-of-mouth played a role,” says Saxena.

Vedant Kanoi, founder and CEO of FoodCloud, agrees: “Initially it was harder to find chefs and empanel them, but now we get almost 10 enquiries daily from new chefs wanting to join us.”

Today, FoodCloud has home chefs as well as professional ones. The ratio of home to professional chefs for Holachef is 65:35 now. But the companies want to put in place a stringent on-boarding process to ensure that food quality remains consistent.

Agarwal says that at his company the chefs are judged for their cooking capacity, passion as well as ambition. “We have a form on our website where potential chefs fill in their details. We then filter them, meet the shortlisted chefs and have a tasting session,” he says. From there on, it is the food quality team that decides if a chef should be brought on board.

Even after the chefs are on board, their kitchens are regularly inspected and audits made for raw material supplies. The companies specify the type of oil to be used and ensure that preservatives are not used.

Harsha Thachery, co-founder and CEO of Masalabox, says her company asks all the chefs to register with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). “And every time a chef cooks, we take a sample portion to ensure that everything that goes out is of standard quality. We take customer reviews seriously and do it on a daily basis.”

As does Holachef, which takes customer feedback and chef rating seriously. And if any chef’s rating falls below three stars out of five, he/she is dis-empanelled. “That is the maximum tolerance level. It has happened in some cases. We are focused on maintaining high quality,” says Saxena.

Part and parcel

While the chef is in charge of deciding the menu, procuring the supplies and cooking the meals, the companies ensure that the food is well packed and dispatched on time from their kitchens. The companies provide the packaging material. After that, the delivery boys take over.

And it is here that the companies are incurring the maximum cost. Logistics takes up almost one-fifth of the operating expense and the start-ups are still experimenting with various models. While Bite Club recruits its own fleet of delivery boys, Holachef is using a hybrid model — own-plus-outsourced staff for pick-up and delivery. “We are hyperlocal. The food supplied in an area is also cooked in the same area, bringing down the cost of logistics,” says Saxena.

The modus operandi differs within markets. Thachery follows the own fleet model in Kochi, as the orders come in early and the deliveries can be planned in advance. But in Bengaluru, she uses the hybrid model owing to last-minute orders and the vastness of the city.

As for the revenue model, these start-ups are still in an experimental phase. Holachef takes a commission from the chef which is 20-30 per cent, depending on the items — non-vegetarian meals have a smaller cut. Neha Puri, founder and CEO of Cyber Chef, says while 60 per cent of the revenue per meal goes to home chefs, her company keeps 40 per cent, reducing the cut for dishes that require more expensive raw materials. Thachery’s Masalabox has a mark-up model — “The chef does the pricing and we add 30 per cent to it,” she says.

Breaking ground

Since all these companies are less than two years old, they are yet to break even. “On an operational basis we have broken even, but there is some more to go,” says Thachery. For Holachef’s Saxena, “Break-even is a concern. At the end of the day, a business has to recover its costs; we have an eye on that constantly. However, in terms of unit economics — per order — we are not losing money.”

To ensure an early break-even, these companies have to focus on minimising wastage and efficient forecasting for the next day. “That’s where technology plays an important role. Tremendous amount of data is generated every day on our app and website. Predictive algorithms are used to forecast the level of demand and also the type of food on given days,” says Saxena. He has figured out that curd rice is a prime seller for a Monday lunch while dal bati churma sells the best for Wednesday and Sunday lunches.

Cyber Chef’s Puri says regional specialities that are not easily available sell fast while street food does well on a Friday evening but not in the middle of the week.

As it is impossible to make a 100 per cent accurate forecast, the companies have made arrangements for handling leftover food. Company staff tend to eat in-house and a considerable quantity is given to NGOs. Bite Club and Holachef have tied up with the Robin Hood Army, a voluntary organisation that takes surplus food from restaurants to the less-fortunate sections of society.

With the scaling up of demand, expansion is also underway. From moving to newer cities to setting up centralised kitchens, these start-ups are doing everything to keep the pot boiling. And when they are able to replicate their success across more cities, it will make life much easier for people who don’t have the time to prepare their requirement of three square meals a day.

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