CHEFistry
Paving The Way For Healthy And Homely Food Delivery System
By Sandhya Agrawal
In the last five years, the budget for food technology has increased 35 times. The scope of food technology start-ups has increased six times between 2017 and 2019. Around the same time, users spend more than twice the time exploring food online in a month with – 32 minutes in 2017 and 72 minutes in 2019.
The Indian food technology industry is set to grow from 25-30 per cent to $8 billion by late 2022 at the annual compound rate of growth. Despite the wide demand, however, there is a considerable gap, and people are unable to get home-style food at the convenience of their doorstep. For the same, CHEFistry has come to the rescue of those who seek home-styled food over junk.
With the motive to solve the problem of home-made food amongst migrants and students, CHEFistry was launched in July 2020. A food-tech start-up, CHEFistry is the brainchild of Mr. Prriyaank Shah (Founder & CEO). The Company, through its unique vision, is solving the problems of students and HomeChefs community by listing them on the platform, eventually leading to vesting the HomeChef to nurture their businesses.
The problems of people in getting healthy, nutritious, hygienic, and home-cooked always was a matter of concern for Prriyaank; he always felt that people regularly compromise on food quality. So, he took up the challenge and stepped forward to solve the issue by launching this unparalleled venture, just as exclusive as their name: CHEFistry.
“The mission is to ensure that the home-made food is home delivered to our customers by connecting them to home kitchens so that they have access to healthy, hygienic and safe food.” Prriyaank Shah
Building A Superior Brand
The visionary company, with its superior thoughts, feels that “to run a business, a vision and appropriate strategy is required, and technology is just an enabler”. With the motive to make the life of HomeChefs and customers easy via technological advancements, CHEFistry has developed a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
In the food-delivery segment, it is crucial to ensure safety, and quality standard as the end product is directly consumable by the customer. Understanding this, CHEFistry ensures food and kitchen standards of HomeChefs through personal kitchen inspection before onboarding the HomeChef and even registers them with FSSAI once the kitchen passes the inspection check. All these steps by CHEFistry ensure the utmost maintenance of quality standards on the part of HomeChefs.
Being a Company that begun during the COVID-19 crisis, the delivery partners and HomeChefs pays due attention to the food-safety precautions. Besides, the Business operates exclusively by charging a registration fee from the HomeChefs to associate with the CHEFistry. To aggregate income, the Company is under the standard industry practice where they set a “take rate” on every processed order.
The Visionaries Behind the Venture
The Founder & CEO at CHEFistry, Mr. Prriyaank Shah is a passionate entrepreneur with a Bachelor degree in Business/Commerce from Mumbai, and two master’s degree, one from University of Mumbai, and another Masters of Business Administration in Finance from the reputed Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai. Before venturing into the path of entrepreneurship, Shah quit his finance job in 2011 and has never looked back since then.
Mr. Prriyaank feels, “In today’s crucial times, it is difficult to practice a work-life balance. So, I believe in doing the right thing at the right time, which will lead to the balance in every aspect of life with things falling just in the right place.”
Apart from Shah, Dr. Anju Anil (Chief Marketing Officer) is responsible for marketing and business development, and Bhavin Gandhi (Chief Technology Officer) is responsible for building sustainable technological architecture for the Company.
Inching Towards Revolution with Strong Vision
Innovatively, CHEFistry gives an inimitable competition to its peers with a distinctive business approach. Here, the Company offers the HomeChefs to place the menu for the upcoming week, including specific time slots which makes it easier for the HomeChefs as well as the consumers to plan and schedule their orders.
In terms of latest developments, the Company is continuously experimenting and innovating to develop native iOS and Android apps along with a Progressive Web App (PWA) for smooth and easy ordering, this stands undeniably crucial for the growth of this Business.
A team of matured enthusiasts work on the development of CHEFistry. Here, they possess a superior quality embedded value system named as C-STEP (Commitment-Systematic, Time-Bound, Ethics, Pride). Besides, the Company doesn’t follow a centralized working environment and allows for flexibility, and this leads to a stronger bond between the team members.
When asked regarding the milestones achieved by the Company, Prriyaank said that the phenomenal idea of the conception of the start-up is the most significant milestone. Additionally, he acclaims the launch of MVP within 50 days of operations as another achievement. As the name spreads, more and more orders will encourage the HomeChefs to do better.
With this, the longstanding vision of CHEFistry is to run food donation camps, and support food and hunger focused NGOs. Also, they are at around 20 HomeChefs currently and are targeting 100 HomeChefs by March 2021, and further, foresees to cater 1 million orders per day by March 2025. The entire team feels that this vision, once achieved, will create a tremendous social impact on multiple stakeholders in the food-tech eco-system.
Parting words
“I’d say if you got an idea, and if you think it’s going to work commercially, go ahead and execute it. Some ideas are incredibly rudimentary. After all, we feel that the effort isn’t worth it because we sit down and evaluate it so much. However, someone else works on the same idea and transforms it into a business.
Today, the pace of execution is the key to run a successful enterprise. We must be fast to fail. But it is imperative to have the right purpose, vision, values, strategy and agility. None knows how many Facebooks, Ubers, Airbnbs, were in the making when one of them became a unicorn. So, if you can see it, you can do it”. Prriyaank Shah
