Foodtech startups in India have taken center-stage the last couple of months, even overtaking the spotlight from the Indian e-commerce space. From expanfsion plans of biggies like Zomato and FoodPanda, to recent funding rounds of startups like Swiggy, TinyOwl, Dazo (formerly TapCibo) and Grab.in, there seems a trend of not just customers but also VCs putting their money where their mouth is. After all just the food services industry is touted to be a $50 billion market and growing at 16-20% each year.

While you may hear of startups once they turn big or in the news for funding, at YourStory we have been able to discover promising new ones much earlier. Here’s a look at the food startups that presented during our Food Tech Crowd Pitch Challenge last month in Bangalore, held in collaboration with crowd engagement platform Catapooolt.

Feazt: The platform brings together housewives, aspiring chefs, networkers, foodies and travellers who wish to meet-up over food. Now with Feazt one may never need to eat alone.

Bueno Kitchen: A platform that let’s one order and deliver food from their own, franchise or partner spoke kitchens. So whether it’s Lebanese, Mexican, American, Indian, Asian, Italian or any other European cuisine, Bueno aims to provide something for everyone.

Cheqmate: They are attempting to create a more efficient order and pay restaurant system primarily with the help of one’s phone. By using data, facilitating cashless payments and automating the process of ordering food, their goal’s to make queues a thing of the past.

Clozerr: This marketing and loyalty automation platform seeks to help businesses retain, acquire, reward, engage, analyse and reach out to their customers. Here customers can check-in at their favourite places with a single tap and get rewarded.

DudeGenie: For all food needs, grocery purchases and anything else one may need, DudeGenie will help deliver it to them. All one needs to do is to text (SMS or WhatsApp) to make one’s life much more convenient.

FalafelFactory: This startup saw a great potential in authentic Middle Eastern food in India and now offers them on-the-go to customers. Through their central kitchens, partner outlets and low cost delivery teams, access to Falafels will be made easy.

FromaHome: They are attempting to solve the challenge of home cooked food not being easily accessible by single men and women across Indian cities. This is being pursued by creating a community of homemakers and good cooks willing to list their menu online to receiving orders.

Tandurust: This startup reaches out to fitness enthusiasts, health conscious people as well as those with medical conditions and helps deliver healthy and balanced meals to their offices and homes.

Gullu’s Kitchen: This food startup makes use of college campus to set-up their kitchen, and from there reach out to people. The main target is the student community, who are believed to have frequent hunger pangs, fewer options to buy food and can make better use of technology to order food.

HomeKitch: Here’s another startup that provides a platform for home-makers, professional cooks to list their food items for bachelors, students and other people to order online. They feel households will be able make additional income as there’s a demand for homemade food in Indian cities.

HungryBells: This app seeks to make use of the hyperlocal trend to help customers discover their favourite food items and brands. Besides discovering new dishes, they seek to provide useful information to customers based on their interests and taste profiles.

Done Solutions: For the food industry they seek to address challenges ranging from lack of multiple modes of ordering, customer engagement, options to up-sell, actionable insights and more, through their cloud-based order management, CRM and analytics platform.

EatonGo: A cloud-based breakfast and brunch restaurant with door delivery, EatonGo seeks to offer all major cuisines of the world to its customers. They are keen to focus on the health conscious and those with less time to make a healthy breakfast.

MeDine: This startup aims to drive offline consumer behaviour through data sciences and technology. In their model, restaurants pay MeDine (now BountyApp) for foot traffic, while customers get rewards by checking-in places.

Pickle&Powder: This startup has worked on a specialised food shopping portal open for all authentic and homemade specialties like masala powders, pickles and sweets.

PlaceofOrigin: Another ‘back to roots’ focused startup, Place of Origin seeks to bring legendary food from different parts of India to your homes. They work with partners who help deliver these items once customers place their orders online.

TheFirstMeal: This food-tech startup also enables individuals and businesses order breakfast and brunch at any place of their convenience. Here the breakfast can be customised in terms of menu, packaging, delivery and payment options.

The event’s startups and delegates came from all over — not just from Bangalore but also from Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and even smaller towns like Coimbatore. These startups made elevator pitches to a connected audience and an expert panel of judges that included the likes of angel investors like Ravi Gururaj and seasoned F&B entrepreneurs like MastKalandar’s Pallavi Gupta. While the panel picked ‘Bueno Kitchen’ and ‘Feazt’ as its winners, the crowd’sfavourite turned out to be ‘PlaceofOrigin’.

It needs to be reiterated that most of these startups have been set up only a few weeks ago and it will be interesting to watch their progress in the coming months. Stay tuned for more exciting stories and event updates.

Source: Yourstory

Like you, I’ve always wanted to be successful in my life. I’ve achieved success now, before my 31st birthday.

My parents wanted me to be a rich and well-known person – a“bada aadmi” – so I studied hard to get a decent job. Like many others, I also thought that a job in an MNC IT company was key to heaven. I would get money, position, respect and, one day, retire as a rich CEO.

It looks scary when I think of myself from a few years back. What the f*ck was I doing at my job?

Getting ready in the morning before the meeting time
Wasting time in useless meetings
Accepting work I did not like
Preparing reports nobody cared about (except my manager)
Filling up fake time-sheets (so my salary would get processed)
Doing work late hours because my company offered so-called flexible timings (company laptop for work-from-home was a curse)
Missing get-togethers and parties with friends because late evening meeting were scheduled with my American client (as they work in their morning only!)
I was a weekend worker because I had to be a responsible employee (actually, a promotion aspirant, so I had to be better than others)
Always waiting for my salary to appear in my account (single biggest reason I spent seven years there)
Thinking of starting a bigger company than my current employer

As you might have guessed, I hated my job. I could never be successful in that work environment. I never wanted to become like my manager or his boss or his boss. There was no inspiration or motivation for doing great work.

Related Read: Why you should not start a startup

Then, I started working on ideas with my friend. We were in a hurry to start a company (not a startup, but a big company). I wanted to do something in the  education field. We hired one person to develop an online platform for schools. When we gained traction, I left my job in February 2014 to build my first startup in the education domain.

We made a lot of mistakes; we wasted a lot of money; we lost direction. My startup failed in six months. It was mainly because of conflicts with the co-founder, but there were more reasons of our failure.

Most important learnings are a collection of failed experiences.

My co-founder joined a lavish job, but I was determined to startup. The whole experience of failure was an eye-opener for me. My dream was broken.

But a dream must be broken to wake you up from sleep.

I was looking to work with other startups as an employee or partner. I still had the  capacity to take risks (minimum salary + equity). It was more important to find founders with similar mindset than high profiled ones.

I met with the Founder of The Morpheus Accelerator, who connected me with his portfolio companies in Delhi. I ended up joining another startup in education. I found exactly what I was looking for – a visionary founder.

We worked hard; we experimented; we changed our marketing and product. Some things went well, some fell apart. We were progressing towards our goals, but without earning any income. We had to pivot to make money, but we could not figure out where our mission matched with VC expectations.  Soon we had to put our work on hold.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

This is a period of struggle most startup founders go through. I am no exception. In this journey, I discovered myself — the real me. I am so glad that I said ‘NO’ to my well-paying job.

It was freedom from gold handcuffs.

Now, I work at my home, enjoying my successful life.

I wake up whenever I like. I don’t remember when I last used an alarm clock. Some days I work till 2:00 AM, but other times, I don’t feel like working beyond 9:00 PM.

It’s the freedom of working.

I go shopping on weekdays when there is no crowd. I don’t have to get frustrated in traffic jams; I don’t have to line up in billing queues. It saves my time and energy, which I use for creative purpose.

Also read: Top 10 reasons why startups fail

I don’t have to live by rules defined by someone (often known as the Manager or Boss).

It’s my life. I decide what’s good for me, and I decide whether I should refine my skills in technology or testing or excel sheets.

I do things that I am not qualified for.

I used to get a ‘C’ grade in English language (and I am still bad at English), but I love writing articles these days. I don’t have a marketing degree, but I’m doing digital marketing.

I always loved studying financial material, but never got the courage to explore it as a profession. I am taking that risk now. I am determined to make my profession around personal finance, like investments, payments, tax savings, banking and credit cards.

As Steve Jobs said beautifully:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I was average in my studies, and I always avoided reading books. I never read story books when I was in school, or fiction novels when I was in college. But now I love reading books — see what I am reading here.

It’s like my re-birth. I am living my life more sensibly. I take care of my physical and spiritual health.

I am doing work that is meaningful.

My work is to touch human lives in positive ways. My first startup was to help education institutes (teachers, parents, students), while my next startup was to help students in learning science.

I love building products; I love coding; I love learning new coding languages. So I’m doing what I love. I’m now learning Ruby on Rails to build world-class web applications.

I spend four to five hours daily with my son. I play with him, cry with him, fight with him and occasionally teach him something. There is more to learn from children than to stuff their mind with knowledge (garbage).

I always dreamed of this life. I wanted to stay close to my family, and now I’m living my dream.

Earlier, I worked for Aricent; now, I work for my family.

Oh! And I forgot to tell you- I’m not rich yet.

Rather, I am poorer than I was last year. But money does not plain success to me — it is a must to have for buying survival and luxury. Survival supports life system, and luxury gives us happiness.

I have both life and happiness.

I know I will be rich one day, but I am successful today.

Source: yourstory

2008 was a pivotal year for Ahmedabad-based Rohan Desai. It was the year when Rohan completed his MBBS and became a doctor but also got through to IIM-Ahmedabad for a MBA.  Ever since this turn of events, a majority of conversations have revolved around why he decided to do an MBA after becoming a doctor? And my question wasn’t very different.

“My parents are doctors. I entered this field with the flow and never really questioned it, but I was always good with mathematics and analytical situations. I was always more involved with things and systems that worked at scale,” says Rohan. He easily got through CAT and made it to IIM-Ahmedbad, the most prestigious B-school in India. Here, Rohan was exposed to a lot of possibilities and his mind was set on building something for the healthcare sector and doctors at large.

After his MBA, Rohan took a consultancy job for a few years but by the end of 2013, he had made up his mind to start up. But what? Being a doctor with a knack for technology, he was observing how doctors used social media. “I’d often come across doctors posting some breakthroughs they made on Facebook which is not a place one would typically expect such updates,” says Rohan. This was one angle but there was something more basic which was broken – doctors work on  different models (contract based, part time, internships, exclusive contract, etc.) with hospitals and clinics, and there is no consolidated place for these openings.

Thus the idea to open a job portal for doctors was born. There are various specialities and super specialities for doctors. With a very wide category spectrum, a dedicated platform for doctors does make sense. And on top of it, they have the social layer with speciality specific feeds so that it is relevant to every doctor on the platform.


(L to R) Rohan Desai, Binal Doshi, and Kinnar Shah
Keen to explore this idea, Rohan got in touch with Binal Doshi, a doctor friend who also went for MBA to IIM-Kozhikode. She liked the idea.

Source: Your story

When Tapan Kumar Das came to Bangalore, he observed that people were not eating healthy. That was when the idea to spread awareness regarding the long-term benefits of healthy food struck him.

Tapan launched iTiffin in 2013. It’s an online-cum-offline tiffin service company that offers high quality healthy and delicious meal plans for homes and offices. With a seamless blend of advanced nutrition, food science and food service, it offers wellness meals and calorie-defined meals that are in accordance with the customer’s preferences.


The company assures qualitative and wholesome food to its patrons. “The idea behind launching iTiffin was to provide people with nutritious meals at their doorstep and make them aware of how lifestyle disorders can be prevented through good food,” says Tapan.

Early days of iTiffin

Although getting early customers and raising initial funding was difficult, in spite of these hassles, iTiffin delivered over one lakh meals in the first year of operation.

“Initially, it was a cumbersome task to maintain the quality of food as well as retain potential customers, but as time passed and people started realising the importance of healthy eating in the country, it became easy for us to deliver high-quality meals to our patrons. Since our inception, we have been bringing innovation and variety in the menu to avoid monotony and lure customers to opt for healthy meals,” points out Tapan.

Growth of business

The Bangalore-based company has grown remarkably during last year attaining the delivery milestone of over one lakh meals in the first year of its operation itself. “With over 5000 loyal customers in our kitty and an average customer retention period of 60 days, we were able to clock revenue of around Rs. 3 crore in the fiscal year 2014. Our USP of providing scientifically-designed nutritious meals for our patrons is the reason behind the immense success of iTiffin,” adds Tapan.

The company is looking forward to expand its orbit to each and every city across India. “We are also extending our product line by launching innovative meal plans that suit the requirement of our patrons,” adds Tapan. iTiffin is looking to raise $10 million to increase its product portfolio and propel its pan India reach.

Why healthy food segment is hot for startups?


The health food domain of the country has been growing at a phenomenal rate since the past few years, owing to the increased level of awareness among people regarding the benefits of a nutritious and balanced diet. The market is new and lucrative as not many players have entered the landscape yet. Over the past one year we have been witnessing a slew of startups making debut in the healthy food segment.
The brainchild of IIT Delhi alumnus FRSH offers healthy food like salads, juices and wholesome cereals among others. , Spoonjoy, offers freshly cut fruits, sprouts, a combination of both, lunch, snacks on a weekly subscription basis. Another New Delhi-based startup Fresh Food ventured into nutrition food market with its flagship product Juice Up which offers a range of 100 percent raw and fresh cold pressed juices.

“Whether in the online or offline space, the health food segment is going to see a positive growth graph. As people grow more conscious about their health and develop an understanding about the importance of having a healthy lifestyle, food companies are going to see enormous growth,” says Tapan.

With the increasing trend of nuclear families, hectic schedules of the working population and the escalating demand for wholesome food at one’s doorstep, the future of the health food segment is promising in the country.

The segment of health and wellness food is estimated to rise to a whopping Rs. 55,000 crore this fiscal year. Due to the increased prevalence of lifestyle diseases in the country, people have now become more aware of the causes of these diseases. This has hence increased the market size of the health food sector, providing umpteen opportunities for food companies to launch healthy and nutritious packaged foods in the country. The fast-paced and hectic life of people has broadened the health-food market enormously.

Source: your story

My mother taught me how to make tea when I was very young. And ever since, I have always been particular about my cup of chai,” says Nitin Saluja, Founder of Chaayos, an NCR based chain of tea outlets. Their tagline reads ‘Experimenting with chai’ and it reflects when you look at their menu where you’ll find teas like ‘aam papad chai’ or the rose cardamom chai. Launched in November 2012, Chaayos currently has eight outlets in NCR and is now planning to expand to Mumbai and Bangalore.

The back story

Chai was always a crucial part of Nitin’s life but he had never thought of opening a chai outlet, especially not after getting through IIT-Bombay! But life always has interesting cards to deal out; one only needs to be open to possibilities.

In the final years of college back in 2006, Nitin was pretty sure that he didn’t want to get into a dull job routine. He got along with a few friends and started a robotics company, Think Labs. Incubated at SINE-IIT Bombay, the company has morphed into a dedicated provider of hands-on science and technology education in India and is currently valued at over $10 million. Moving on from the operations at Think Labs, Nitin moved to Opera Solutions for a five-year stint before the entrepreneurial bug bit again.

“Somehow chai was always there at the back of my mind. And when I asked myself if there is a place in India where I can find ‘meri wali chai’, the answer was no,” says Nitin. This is when he decided to go ahead with this seemingly crazy idea of starting an outlet of chai. The idea was to have something like a Starbucks for India and that of course has to deal with ‘chai’.


Starting up

While thinking of this, Nitin was introduced to Raghav Verma, an IIT Delhi graduate of batch 2010 by a common friend and the two hit it off straight away. Nitin took care of the product development, settling the supply chain, setting up processes while Raghav took care of marketing and business development.


Founders- Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma
Settling for the name Chaayos, the duo opened their first outlet, got the unit economics right and charted a scaling up plan. Over the last two and a half years, they have opened seven more outlets with a core team of eight people and a staff of 50 as the ground staff.

“The challenge which most people face is to maintain quality while scaling up. This is one area which we think we’ve got covered and gives us an edge. Each of our cups can give that ‘meri wali chai’ feeling,” says Nitin. Their highest grossing outlet turned in an annual revenue of INR 1 crore. The target market for Chaayos is the upcoming middle class that has money but is equally conscious of the value they get.

Interiors at Chaayos

Making chai a venture backed business

Great. All this sounds good but Chaayos has also been able to raise an angel round from the likes of Zishaan Hayath. How is chai a venture-backed business? Don’t investors look for a 100x return? Nitin gives us Zishaan’s perspective to this:

Is the market there? Well, chai is a product that doesn’t need any marketing.
And if one outlet is doing INR 1 crore annually, it is pretty easy to scale up to INR 100 crores in total in the next two years (Math – 60 Stores X 1.5Cr per store = 90Cr ~ 100 Cr)
And chai is not restricted to India alone; Chaayos will be keeping an eye out for SE Asia, the Middle East and other regions as well.
The plan for Chaayos is to setup 60 more outlets in 2015 and scale up rapidly. Apart from outlets, they already have tie ups with corporate for deliveries. Their app is coming out soon which will be opening a B2C subscription channel as well.

Is Chaayos alone in the race? Ofcourse not. Chai Point is perhaps the largest player in the area which already has 60+ stores. There are many other chains as well like Infinitea, Chai Thela, Chaipatty, etc. but most of them haven’t been able to scale up quickly enough (and everyone doesn’t have to). Nitin and team are currently focusing on getting the deliveries kick off with their app launch along with a fund raising effort to fuel growth.

Source: You're story

When the first season of ‘Satyamev Jayate’ was launched, it had the country talking about unspoken issues faced by people around us. Be it casteism, healthcare, Khap Panchayat or the stigma of bearing a girl child, every issue was raised.

Madhu Gupta was one of millions who watched Satyamave Jayate and was shocked to find out how almost no doctor prescribes cheaper generic medicines. The cost of these medicines is close to 40-to-60 per cent of branded medicines. They also have the same compositions and effects as their branded counterparts.


Madhu decided to take responsibility to change things. She started discussing the prospects of starting up to provide generic medicine to people. Madhu teamed up with her husband Pankaj, and both of them started MereMedicare.com- an e-commerce portal for generic medicines.

Prior to starting MereMedicare, Madhu was an associate consultant at Oracle India Pvt Ltd for two years, while Pankaj worked with Veeco instruments in various capacities. Both are based out of the US, but the fact that they were away from India did not deter them to startup.

At present, they have close to 5000 registered patients and more than 250 pharmacies in their network. After deliberating and researching various aspects of running an e-commerce business in the pharmaceutical industry, Madhu and Pankaj finally started up in July 2014. For every medicine, customers can buy either branded or generic versions. While branded medicines cost more, generic medicines are cheap in comparison with the same benefits. The company has its presence in Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Bangalore.

Talking about funds, Pankaj says, “So far, we’ve been bootstrapping to run and expand our business. We believe that personal funds will be sufficient to expand Mera Medicare in at least 10 cities. For expanding more and adding more business segments, we`ll definitely need funds. In the last six months, we’ve received offers from three good investors, but we politely declined them. We plan to re-engage with them at the right time.”

The company works as a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers in the healthcare industry. The founders are based out of the US, while the team is set up in India. At present, the team coordinates through Skype. MeraMedicare has four full-time members on board and a team of over forty interns working from different locations. The company works on a subscription model for regular patients and healthcare professionals, while others can purchase medicines online -just like any e-commerce site- with a delivery time of around 2-4 hours.

Talking about their future plans Pankaj says, “Overall, we want to be the Flipkart of healthcare sector. We would like to expand in 25 major cities of India in the next two years. We plan to be operational in six more cities in India, which are tentatively Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Surat, Chennai and Jaipur. “

While e-commerce is on the rise, healthcare commerce still has a long way to go, and the market is ripe for more players. At present, we have companies like HealthKart, Medidart and Medist working on this front, too. But considering the population and the market, we still have a lot of opportunities in this sector.

Source: Your story

Bengaluru-based Qyk, a mobile marketplace for finding local services, has raised angel funding from a group of angel investors, including early investors of Ola, Housing and Delhivery.
 Deepak Singhal, Co-founder & CEO of Qyk, said, “Hiring a local service provider in India is a big challenge and we feel the timing is perfect to build a mobile-first solution given the rapidly increasing smartphone penetration.”

Keeping up with uberification of services’ trend, Qyk seeks to serve as a one-stop platform for availing a range of local services from local service providers in the vicinity. The mobile marketplace connects service seekers with service providers. They are doing what JustDial has been doing for the web and call centre for a mobile and messaging era.Qyk founding team - Deepak Singhal, Sangharsh Boudhh, Shobhit Singhal and Anubhav Sahoo

The founding team comprises folks with relevant experience in building scalable Internet and mobile products. Qyk was founded four months ago with a vision to build a hyper local solution for customers. Founders are alumnus of IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur -- Deepak Singhal, Sangharsh Boudhh, Shobhit Singhal and Anubhav Sahoo -- who come with past experience of working with companies like Ola, InMobi, Practo and Deutsche Bank.

How does Qyk work?


The app asks users to specify his/her service requirements and it pushes aggregates competitive quotes from the most relevant service providers. It makes it easy to compare and save time and money.

Qyk is a mobile platform that enables customers to hire trustworthy service providers and professionals near their area. This includes service providers other than ‘home services’. Finding a reliable and competent local service provider specific to one’s requirements is difficult and time consuming. Qyk offers the customer, options tailored to his personalized needs by enabling comparisons and competitive quotes. This enables them to make a well informed choice.

Regarding the future potential of Qyk, “Local services solutions market is ready to be disrupted and this is a team which has the vision and skill-set to do it. We need a mobile solution like Qyk to help businesses grow and enable customers to find the right service providers,” says Zishaan Hayath, who is early investor in Housing and Ola.

Angel investors

Investors include Zishaan Hayath (Co-founder of Toppr and Powai Lake Ventures), Abhishek Goyal (CEO and Co-founder of Tracxn.com, ex-Accel Partners) and Sahil Barua (CEO and Co-founder of Delhivery).

Abhishek Goyal, early investor in Delhivery, says “Qyk is a great idea that helps us find local services that are more professional in nature. There are two large plays in local services, one is on-demand and the other is reverse auction. Reverse-auction business model is largely a technology play. Team Qyk’s approach of solving this problem via a mobile first product and their extensive experience in technology gives them a very big advantage to be the market leader."

Now in Bangladesh, Our peon is providing this type of services. They do not develope any app for this service. But on demand of the customer they are dedicated for those services booked over the mobile. Our peon will develope the app so that they can provide services on technology based.