Food Start Ups, The New Business Trend Hits India


BENGALURU: Powai was once a sleepy suburb of Mumbai. Now this north eastern suburb has developed fast with incubulation cells by IIT Bombay and other industries. Entrepreneurs, investors and employees all intend to invest into the neighborhood, hunting for the next big idea.

Saurabh Saxena, has started his food and beverage start up, Hola Chef in September 2014. Hola Chef is an online venture that caters meal made by top chefs to customers. Hola Chef undertook some 150 orders that month and now caters almost 20,000-30,000 orders every month, Saxena claims.

Saxena says, "We want to create entrepreneurs out of chefs. There's a huge community of chefs who are outstanding with what they do and no one knows about them."

In India, the growth of well funded ventures like Zomato and Food Panda reflects the scope of growth of online food and beverage intermediaries. Zomato, has raised over $100 million in VC funding to fuel its growth, both at here and abroad. Foodpanda has snapped up two local firms Tasty Khana and Just Eat India, months apart, to propel its growth here. 

Traxn, a provider of data, estimates that some four dozen food ventures were founded Powai.

Lunia of India Quotient says "On the internet, everyone is your customer. The main challenges are capacity, quality and consistency of your products."

According to counts, 30 percent of restaurants close within a year, unable to manage the costs. 

Some restaurants such as Fasso's allow you to tweet an order, while a raft of third-party apps let you get a meal in half a minute. "Mobile is removing the friction in this business and increasing loyalty," claims Lunia. 

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