The food-tech industry in India is booming. With key players such as FoodPanda leading the revolution, India has experienced a huge surge of start-ups bursting to get a piece of the market. Investors are seeing the worth in this boom and are investing heavily in food-tech start-ups, particularly those in the food delivery sector. Earlier this year, a young food delivery start up, Yumist, received $1m from Orios Venture Partners, whilst another, Bueno, received $600k from an undisclosed angel investor.
Despite this boom, we’ve decided to explore some of the start-ups trying to do something a little bit different. We’ve identified four young start-ups that have identified their own gap in the market and are working hard to build a successful company in India’s ever-evolving food and beverage sector.
Happiness Bars
Based in Bangalore, this start up began whilst its founder, Shubra Acharya, was at university. Her artisan chocolate company allows the customer to customise their own bars, from chocolate type, flavours and toppings – essentially allowing them to play “chocolatier”. Gaining a strong following from B2B clients, including those from India’s top IT firms and large car showrooms, the start-up has experienced strong growth since launching in 2014. Whilst already achieving a strong presence throughout India, Happiness Bars’ next plan is to gain an international audience throughout the B2B sector.
DropKaffe
The concept for Dropkaffe came when its founders decided that the standard of office coffee was poor. The four founders came up with a plan to bring great-tasting, freshly brewed coffee to busy office workers, offering them quality, affordability and accessibility. Already live in five locations across Bangalore, the team’s plan is to set up six more centres in the area by the end of the year and progress into developing cold beverages. Fulfilling around 300 orders a day, DropKaffe’s growth rate means the team is expecting to reach 1,000 orders a day in the next couple of months. Another major focus for the team is packaging. Believing India still lags behind when it comes to packaging, they are working on addressing solutions for issues such as, spillage and insulation.
Yoga Bars
Inspired by the health and fitness craze in the US, two young sisters started up Yoga Bars in order to bring the “healthy” snack bar craze to India. Seeing a gap in the market for a quality, natural snack, they launched their company in August 2014. Unlike its competitors, Yoga Bars differentiates itself by being 100% natural, without the addition of corn starch, additives or added vitamins. The company is already experiencing a great amount of success and through a mixture of offline stockists and online selling, since starting, its product sales have risen from 2,000 to 20,000!
Quinto
Unlike its competitors, Quinto is a food app, designed by a team in Maharashtra, which has been developed to suit the evolved restaurant diner. Rather than just helping diners discover new restaurants, Quinto uses a system of crowdsourcing to create a personalised food recommendation engine which helps its users discover the best food options. Each dish has a star rating, and the users are able to make an informed decision on the restaurant or meal based on the rating and feedback. Whilst the app is currently in beta testing mode, the team have high hopes for success since receiving an undisclosed amount of funding from the founder of the restaurant chain Faaso’s earlier this year.
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