Published On: December 7th, 2020
The online food delivery system has found its way towards the dining table of several Indian households to satisfy the appetite when exquisite flavours and short-time are the priorities. Even during the current pandemic crisis, the orders for takeaway meals and home-delivered meals are booming. It is estimated that the food-service industry is worth 5000 crores in India.
Although, opening a restaurant may sound easy but to cater to mounting orders for the diners and takeaway may not be possible for every cooking facility to complete with limited items of furniture and overriding overheads.
What is Cloud Kitchen?
Cloud Kitchens are also known as ghost or dark kitchens with a low-cost model wherein the kitchen is either rented out or owned and provide cooked food for deliveries within the local area or region. Cloud kitchen is a low-investment model to fulfil the sky-rocketing demands of foodies who love to binge on a restaurant-like-food at home without stepping out. Cloud kitchens accept orders through an online portal or apps without offering any dining facilities.
The role of Cloud Kitchen has revamped the world of home-delivered food to the next level. Cloud Kitchen is a concept wherein the order is received from online portals and cooked food is delivered at the doorstep of the customers. Hence, it eliminates the need for high investment, restaurant space, furniture, décor, lighting, cutlery, manpower, and other expenses.
As result, the food becomes affordable so that the demand for a large segment of the society can be served. Besides, various online portals have tied ups with the food preparation outlets. Funding for small business startups is usually done by angel investors or through a business angel network for establishing a cloud kitchen. Besides, certain mandatory licenses are required from FSSAI, GST Registration, Trade License from Municipal office, Fire & Safety License, etc.
Here, we are going to discuss some of the reputed and top 5 startup brands based on cloud kitchen that have gained popularity and carved their mark amongst diners throughout the country.
Top 5 Startups on Cloud Kitchen That Have Stormed the Industry
1) Swiggy
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Being India’s largest food delivery startup with over 1000 cloud kitchens, Swiggy was a seed planted by Nandan Reddy and Sriharsha Majety who are alumni of BITS (Pilani). In August 2014, they started their dream project in Bangalore which became the first online food ordering platform. Now it has marked its presence in all the major cities of the countries with more than 140,000 restaurant-partners, 2.1 lakhs delivery executives. Talking about the net worth of the company, it is a whopping 3.6 billion dollars. The CEO, Sriharsha got inspiration from the Founder of RedBus, Phanindra Sama, and discussed his idea with Co-Founder, Nandan to venture into a business that uses technology as well as offers offline jobs.
They have expanded their brand and turn out to be a game-changer of food-industry with an average delivery time of about 37 minutes. Recently, Swiggy has launched several features for its customers such as Swiggy Pop, Swiggy Access, and Swiggy Schedule along with the delivery of groceries as well. As per a trusted source, Swiggy has a 60% revenue share in a food delivery startup that alone handles 1.4 million orders daily.
2) Zomato
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Zomato was started by two IIT Delhi alumni Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah who first started Foodiebay by uploading soft copies of menu cards on the website. As they observed people waste a lot of time laying their hands on the menu card. Foodiebay was started in Delhi that further extended its root to other cities such as Kolkata and Mumbai. In the year 2010, Foodiebay was branded as ‘’Zomato’’. Presently, Zomato has 6,500 restaurants partners on its list and 2.3 lakhs delivery executives.
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As the demand grew for small business financing, their angel investment opportunity was availed by Sanjeev Bikhchandani (founder of Naukri) who invested 1 million dollars. Recently, Zomato has partnered with Uber Eats to attain 55% of the market share in the online food business and operates in 24 countries worldwide including India, Australia, USA, UAE, etc. At present, they are fulfilling 1.25 million daily orders in India and UAE. Currently, the net worth of Zomato is over 2 billion dollars.
3) Faasos
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This Kolkata based company was launched by two IIM grads and friends – Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee. Faasos is an end-to-end delivery chain in Pune. It is operating in almost 35 major cities across India along with 125 fulfilment centres at present including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Surat, Kolkata, Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Gurugram, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Indore, etc. Their initial struggle was to hire like-minded people who are out of the box thinkers and MBA or Engineering pass-out without any experience in the food industry.
Faasos raised its funding of about 5 million dollars in November 2011 and today it serves about 10,000 customers every day with a daily changing menu on the ordering portal.
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In 2013, they observed that food delivery on the internet is paving way for the traditional model. They chose to make Faasos a tech-friendly brand that could fetch online orders. With the launch of their mobile app in March 2014, they could receive startup business funding of the orders via the app itself and decided to provide app-only service. At present they are valued at 220 million dollars while operating 176 cloud kitchens running throughout the country and funded by Rebel Foods.
4) Sweet Truth
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When the Indian sweet shops were making traditional Indian sweets using fresh and natural ingredients, during the early 2000s the people’s taste was inclining towards chocolates as well as international sweets. Sweet Truth’s brand campaign is launched by Rebel Foods in partnership with Wunderman Thompson South Asia with the purpose to bring delicious and attractive desserts and sweets for the consumers. Sweet Truth is available in around 35 cities in India.
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Sweet Truth is all about desserts, classic cakes, cheesecakes, and gourmet dessert treats when you want to satisfy your craving for the sweet tooth. Not only can you order for yourself, but also for your friends for special occasions.
5) Foodpanda
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Foodpanda was incepted by Ralf Wenzel and Benjamin Bauer during the year 2012. It is another cloud kitchen and a mobile food delivery giant that is a startup of a Berlin-based company and is presently operating in about 50 countries throughout the world including India, Asia Pacific, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, and more. As of now, Foodpanda has 115,000 restaurants as its partners to deliver delicious food in 500 cities located on 5 continents and employs more than 80,000 riders. In 2016, Foodpands was acquired by Delivery Helo and has well-known restaurants in its list including McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, KFC, etc. Foodpanda has managed to raise over 318 million dollars in venture capital.
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Have you found these cloud kitchen startups exciting and inspiring enough?
Cloud kitchens are striking gold across the globe and have come up with their own pros and cons. You need to understand and analyze your goals, capital, technology, and strategy before you plan to start your own cloud kitchen bran. If you have an acumen, vision, and zeal, then become a part of this industry with your own startup venture. Else, enjoy the mouth-watering treat from these online cloud kitchen portals.
