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Shubham Maheshwari, founder of Being Chef. A Mechanical engineer from NIT Jaipur is a big-time foodie. Being a big-time foodie is the reason he ended up doing a venture in food. he loves to travel, majorly budget backpack trips and also devote a part of his free time in some or the other way to contribute to society.
Before entering into being chef he was working with a US-based consulting firm. They used to help companies with their sales and marketing strategies. Shubham was working on a project of a pharmaceutical giant, consulting them with Incentive Compensation model to boost up their sales.
Our Recipe kit empowers you to cook anything in less than 5 mins. We provide you with all the ingredients (chopped & processed) customized as per your taste with a simple 8 step recipe card. All you have to do is have a frying pan and a ladle, with a stove/induction. Rest all is taken care of by us..
Our Recipe kit empowers you to cook anything in less than 5 mins. We provide you with all the ingredients (chopped & processed) customized as per your taste with a simple 8 step recipe card. All you have to do is have a frying pan and a ladle, with a stove/induction. Rest all is taken care of by us.Being Chef is a start-up operational in F&B space and provides a one-stop solution in veg food ranging from DIY cooking kit to fully cooked meals and homely economic meals to exotic premium meals.
The main problem that they are trying to solve is your daily food requirement. Currently, millennials are facing a lot of issues when it comes to meeting their daily food requirement. Supply of cooks is much lesser than the current demand and time involved in cooking is much higher than what is available with them. Fully cooked food ordered from outside is always a concern as they are skeptical of quality but they are bound to order it in the absence of an alternative solution. When it comes to cooking the hassle of procuring ingredients in the right quantity, processing them as per the recipe, making dough and wastage of un-utilized raw and processed food compel them to avoid cooking.
How did the journey start towards startup, from planning to funding?
Shubham explains :
I started planning for it the day I faced the issue while trying to cook with my friends. I did research on around a few thousands prospective target group to understand the demand. Then left the job to work on creating this product. For an initial investment, I decided to go to friends and family for their support.
We wanted to put in our own money before raising external investment, to justify the use of external investment. Valuing money is very important in a startup. Thus, we wanted to do the possible errors with our own money in the initial phase and then raise the growth fund from external investors.
Is startup growing at good phase ? What are the upcoming plans from your end?
The startup had a very crazy journey in the past 5 years. They started small, became profitable, then scaled up the ops, served 17,000 + people in a single day, launched a few new products to solve the existing problems, became profitable again at that scale.
Now they are scaling up their current model, doing some crazy innovation in end-to-end automation in cooking, and are very soon launching a model to take care of daily food needs in a different way.
What’s startup’s stack on the competition? Who are the competitors? How they are overcoming them?
As per the company currently, there is no competition for their entire model. Though part of the model has competition, then they are not operating in a pure veg segment. Moreover, their products have been designed in the way to solve the pinpointed problems of the consumers.
Recognition or awards for your startup?
Being Chef is recognized by DIPP, Govt of India (now DPI). Also, they were the finalist of Smart 50 competition organized by Dept of Science & Technology, Govt of India and IIM Calcutta. They were selecting the startups which will transform India (out of 20,000+startups in India) They were being selected on the model to make India ZERO Food Wastage nation.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
[blockquote align=”none” author=”Says Shubham”]We see ourselves touching more than a million lives daily, making them healthy and fit and enabling them to cook their daily meals with convenience.[/blockquote]
