|
|
|
You can get e-magazine links on WhatsApp. Click here
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Consumer torn between spending, speed of delivery and realness of food”
|
|
Monday, 19 May, 2025, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
|
|
|
 Different from typical food delivery apps that partner with restaurants and use stored or pre-cooked food, Bhookle focuses on zero-storage, zero-waste, freshly prepared home meals. The emotional and cultural connection formed between home chefs and customers, along with the regional diversity of the food, offers a more intimate and satisfying dining experience, said Arvind Ravichandran, founder, Bhookle, in an email interview with Nandita Vijayasimha. Excerpts:
How has Bhookle app fared so far?
Bhookle has seen tremendous success in Chennai, and its recent launch in Bengaluru has also been met with considerable enthusiasm. With over 270 home chefs onboarded by the first week of May and 2,500 more in the pipeline, the platform is quickly establishing itself as the go-to app for authentic home-cooked meals. At least 72% of Bengaluru customers are repeat users. Much of the customer acquisition has been driven organically through word-of-mouth.
What are its key strengths to be accepted in the market?
The key strengths are its hyper-local home chef network offering authentic, regional food not typically available on other platforms, freshly prepared meals cooked only after order, ensuring zero storage and minimal waste. It appeals to the emotional and nostalgic connection customers have with home food. It has a strong micro-entrepreneurial model that empowers home chefs, giving them a sense of identity and purpose and high customer satisfaction and repeat rates of 72% in Bengaluru.
Provide details on the food production facility that is generating diverse cuisine – from traditional Karnataka flavours and regional specialties from Kerala, Sindhi, Maharashtrian, and North Indian cuisines.
We don’t operate from a centralised food production facility. Instead, we leverage a decentralised network of home chefs across Bangalore and Chennai. These chefs prepare food from their own kitchens, offering a wide spectrum of regional cuisines such as authentic Karnataka dishes like Ragi Mudde, Akki Roti, and Bisibelabath, as well as specialties from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Sindh, and North India.
What kind of R&D goes into your products?
There is a dedicated team to trace and bring etymological and regional rich flavours based on chef’s regional expertise. Largely in the food industry, today, its segmented into North Indian and South Indian and the same repeat of 50 dishes across restaurants. We are working to reforming this bringing in dishes with strong cultural and historical significance back to life. 64% of dishes in Bhookle are not found on any food platforms.
What are the factors that led Bhookle to become an award winning food delivery app?
The human centricity behind the app is what won the award. No single app connects two human personas like Bhookle does building long lasting relationship between the chef and consumer. This is not a brand to consumer association but mom to consumer association. There is a huge difference between ordering from ‘Kavitha Kitchen’ to ordering from ‘Kavitha Amma’ and we focus on that.
Are you planning to introduce anything new in view of the mood in the market?
Yes, we are preparing to launch subscription services soon, adding to our current ‘Order Now, one hour delivery and ‘Pre-Order’ options. This will allow users greater flexibility and consistency in accessing their favourite home-cooked meals.
What about plans such as expansion, diversification, collaboration and so on?
We are currently expanding aggressively within Bengaluru, with a goal of onboarding 500 home chefs by Q1 FY25. The company also sees operational advantages in cities closer to its base in Chennai and is open to broader expansion. With the upcoming subscription model and broader cuisine representation, the app is also diversifying its offerings to cater to a larger customer base.
What is your competition in the market?
There are a few players in the market such as Cookr and AppGoodFood operating on the home food space but they are mostly cloud kitchen in disguise and not real home food. The market for home food in India remains largely unstructured and untapped still.
Are there any innovative products offered by you?
Yes, we offer a unique model that connects customers directly with home chefs who prepare fresh, authentic meals only after an order is placed. Additionally, the app’s upcoming subscription model and emphasis on nostalgia-driven, regional cuisine set it apart from traditional restaurant delivery services.
How are these new products different from that of your competitors?
Unlike typical food delivery apps that partner with restaurants and use stored or pre-cooked food, Bhookle focuses on zero-storage, zero-waste, freshly prepared home meals. The emotional and cultural connection formed between home chefs and customers, along with the regional diversity of the food, offers a more intimate and satisfying dining experience.
To elaborate on this, we differ from rest of the players in the market by a few key factors. To begin with, there is a purpose & vision. The genesis of Bhookle is a beautiful story layered around ‘How a son who is so used to his mom’s food and after her demise, couldn’t get a similar experience from other food providers and hence decided to solve the problem himself by building something unique’. As simple as that. He couldn’t find the various dishes his mom makes any more but there are several moms like his but he doesn’t have access to it. The root cause narrative is genuine, personal and intimate.
Ours is a social food platform. Unlike other players in the market, Bhookle doesn’t associate itself with restaurants or cloud kitchens. It stays true to its vision by only enabling and empowering home chefs. These home chefs are your regular Ammas, Daadhis and Stay at Home Moms and young adults who have a true passion for cooking. They are not in any way a commercial kitchen that can produce in bulk. They don’t know about any jugaads around food storage or preservatives or any restaurant short cuts. What you get out of them are genuine food that they cook for their family.
It is the most humanised app. Bhookle won the Food Connoisseur Award for the Best Food Delivery App of the Year 2024 , majorly for the way it is built. There is no brand to human association here. Its Human to Human association. Throughout the app, there is humanisation involved where Bhookle highlights each individual chef as a human and not kitchen with their real photos, videos of the kitchen and biographic information about them and their etymology. This allows users of the app to build relationship with the person cooking as a human and not as a brand. For example, there is lots of difference between ordering from Kavitha Aunty vs Kavitha Kitchen.
Empowerment chefs who partner with Bhookle are on the platform for reasons such as ‘Identity’, ‘Being Valued and Productive’ and ‘Financial Independence’. We have empowered close to 275 home chefs, 99.4% are women across Chennai and Bangalore and will be tripling within the next quarter. Successful home chefs make as much 47.2K per month on the platform. They value this platform with a retention rate of nearly 96% because of transparency and honesty in terms of payment and handling with no hidden fee or additional revenue eating such as onboarding fee and marketing fee as charged by other food platforms.
Keeping Cultures Alive Restaurant or cloud kitchen focuses on the same 15 dishes we know that belong to a cuisine say North Indian or South Indian. Bhookle focuses just not on that but traces and brings back several unique food strong in culture and authenticity you can’t find in any other platform.
You offer meal plans for the elderly and actively works towards minimising food waste by cooking fresh upon order, can you expand on this?
We emphasise zero food waste by ensuring meals are only cooked post-order. There is no bulk cooking or pre-storage. The core principle of nutritious, home-cooked food can naturally cater to elderly dietary preferences.
What are the future efforts of Bhookle?
We aim to become the ‘Home Food’ app of India, scaling its home chef network across major cities while staying true to its core values of authenticity, freshness, and regional representation. The app also intends to introduce subscription models and explore deeper regional food discoverability.
Any plans to raise funds to expand operations?
Having proved initial market and product fit for demand and supply, we are actively looking for early stage investment partners currently.
How receptive are private equity (PE) and venture capitalists to this sector of food app?
There is a huge interest in the PE space as what we are trying to build with Bhookle is sort of the early days of AirBnB and the market potential is truly welcoming. Out of the 21 meal opportunities for a consumer per week assuming 3 meals/7days, there is enough opportunity for Bhookle to be that trusted second kitchen augmenting to restaurant eating behaviours.
What is the current scene for food app in India?
Post-Covid and the rise in millennial spending and the increase in 50+ population demanding healthy and real food, there is huge upsurge in the home food market. And also people are slowly coming out of the fad of 10 min food deliveries simply because they are realising that what can be given in 10 mins is not even real food but stored and reheated unhealthy mush.
What are the challenges of the food apps sector?
The food app sector is confused right now. On one end, there is 10 minute food delivery that is rushed at a lower price point and, on the other end, there is healthy food that comes perhaps not in 10 minutes but in 1 hour but at a higher price point and consumer is torn between spending, speed of delivery and the realness of the food.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|