A few Indian startups, such as Mukunda Foods, Xook, and On2Cook, are attempting to build the food-as-a-service (FaaS) business by incorporating robotics into the kitchen menu. These machines guarantee faster and more consistent food preparation with no or little manual labour.
The last biryani you ordered was probably made by a machine rather than a cook. Shocked? Don't be that way.
Most cloud kitchens and restaurant chains are increasingly relying on machines rather than human labour to prepare food. Consider Dunkel Kitchen, a cloud kitchen chain in Bengaluru. Owner Karthikeyan Selvaraj claims that automation has assisted him in overcoming a major challenge.
"Relying on labour is a major pain in this industry because they frequently leave in a matter of months." And that, obviously, cannot be an excuse for a drop in quality or a poor customer experience. "Food must be consistent and on point every time," he says.
To address this, he spent Rs 2.5 lakh on a wokie, which is primarily a machine for making biryani but can also prepare a variety of other dishes from various cuisines with basic machine operators.
Have you ever ordered tea from Chai Point and noticed how it always tastes the same? That's because it's always brewed by a system built by the startup that follows instructions stored on the cloud, as opposed to your next-door tea stall owner, who has help on hand to make it each time. After its new bet on these brewing systems, the tea company plans to go public.
"We will grow with these Android-based machines." "As we partner with other outlets, offices, and so on in other cities, we will address all of these machines' preventive maintenance, supply chain issues, warehouses, and so on," said Amuleek Singh Bijral, co-founder and CEO of Chai Point.
He went on to say that these machines enable anyone to open a store. "All that needs to be done before brewing is to load the machine with ingredients."
A single machine can brew 500 cups of coffee per day. Through its business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) channel, the company has installed 5,000 machines in 19 cities across the country.
Restaurants, cloud kitchens, and corporate offices are increasingly relying on machines to prepare food because it is faster, less expensive, and eliminates human dependency, among other advantages. A few Indian startups, such as Mukunda Foods, Xook, and On2Cook, are attempting to build the food-as-a-service (FaaS) business by incorporating robotics into the kitchen menu. These machines guarantee faster and more consistent food preparation with no or little human intervention.
The history
This market, which did not exist a decade ago, began to gain traction following the explosion of online food delivery and cloud kitchens. But it didn't come with a silver platter.
"It wasn't a demand back then; it was a challenge," said Eshwar K Vikas, co-founder of Mukunda Foods and a machine builder since 2014. Today, the startup sells approximately 5,000 of these machines to restaurants and cloud kitchens each year, with prices ranging from Rs 40,000 to Rs 2 lakh.
"Around 2016-2017, food ordering at home began to pick up, with players such as TinyOwl, Foodpanda, and Ola Foods (among the early entrants) driving demand." Many people assumed that because they didn't have to worry about demand generation, expanding this business would be simple. So the next goal was to expand. "That's when the problem started," Vikas explained.
Restaurants began to experience issues such as inconsistent quality and decreased operational efficiencies. "The answer was automation," Vikas added. Demand increased significantly after Zomato and Swiggy entered the food delivery space.
Vikas stated that he began speaking with restaurant owners in order to resolve this issue. At the moment, his machines can prepare everything from dosas to biryanis to burgers and everything in between in a fraction of the time it normally takes.
Business expansion
Vikas' business began in a basement in Bommanahalli, a southern Bengaluru suburb, and is now housed in a 20,000 sq ft manufacturing facility that produces machines capable of serving food from large swaths of the world, which is useful given that 10% of sales are overseas.
Another company, Xook, founded in 2020, aims to build a full-stack robotics kitchen, according to co-founder Raj Natarajan. The startup tested the machines in India, focusing on corporate offices, housing societies, and co-working spaces, and is now expanding to the United States through partnerships with restaurants, hospitals, and corporations.
"We want food to be as accessible as coffee." You get fresh coffee all day in an office or a hospital; we want to do the same for food," Natarajan explained.
Xook intends to succeed in one market before expanding into others. After raising $1.3 million in pre-seed funding, the two-year-old company is in the process of deploying machines across the US market.
Meanwhile, an early-stage startup called On2Cook has begun developing a 'unified' device that combines the functions of a gas stove, microwave, and induction stove into a single device and saves energy and cooking time thanks to its internet-of-things capabilities.
On2Cook intends to sell 3,000 of these devices by next April for around $500 each in locations such as Dubai, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It will be less expensive in India.
How do the machines work?
Typically, the operator enters the recipe and instructions, which include temperature, time, and ingredients, into the machine, and once done, the machine begins to prepare the meal based on these inputs, with no manual intervention.
When it comes to international cuisine, the real challenge begins. Xook has so far offered six cuisines, including savoury Indian chats, Chinese favourites, pasta, and other Mediterranean fare, and is now offering meal bowls.
Taking on various cuisines, he says, "It all comes down to the ingredients, heating, sorting, and frying for any kind of bowl dish." As a result, we created a versatile solution to handle the various ingredients."
What comes next?
In the coming years, these types of machines may be seen in homes as well. For example, Up, stylized as Up, is a consumer hardware startup founded by Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma that has piloted a machine that can help prepare food with minimal fuss and in record time. The delishUp device, which comes with an app, can chop, stir, and generally prepare food faster.
"The product includes a touchscreen that allows the user to instruct the machine to cook the recipe. Whether it's Indian, Chinese, or cookies, the machine can currently prepare 160 recipes, with three added each week. "One can also save or record recipes in the device and share them with others who use the product, which will be linked to the internet," Mody explained.
His startup has already received backing from Tim Draper, an early Tesla investor, and Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, among others.
Mody believes that, while digitisation has taken over the world and India, kitchens are still lagging behind, which they intend to address.
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