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Making kitchens hands- free | Eshwar Vikas @ Mukunda Foods
218 Plays1 year ago
From college fest vendor to India's kitchen automation giant- Eshwar' tale embodies grit, hustle, and relentless optimism. He crafted Mukunda Foods from zero capital to Zomato-backed success. Learn how he revolutionised kitchen processes for leading restaurant chains.
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Read more about Mukunda Foods :-
1.Interview: Mukunda Foods CEO Eshwar K Vikas On Driving Innovation In Commercial Kitchen Technology
2.How Mukunda Foods' kitchen robots dish out dosas, noodles and more
3.‘Kitchen robotics will revolutionise food & beverages industry’
4.How Mukunda Foods is helping restaurants function smoothly in the current times
5.What transformation does the food-tech industry is looking at in 2023?
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Transcript
From Vada Pav to Kitchen Automation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is Ishwar, co-founder at Tom Okundapur's. We are a kitchen tech company. We make machines that cook food automatically for restaurants in the QSS space.
00:00:22
Speaker
A second-year college student takes a stroll in the college fest and sells vada pav. This humble beginning led to the creation of India's largest kitchen automation company that counts Zomattu as one of its investors. This episode of Founder Thesis is truly a masterclass in grit, hustle and relentless optimism.
00:00:40
Speaker
Ishwar Vikas had not even graduated when he started Mukunda Foods with literally no capital. And the rest of his story is no less inspiring. Mukunda Foods helps companies to automate their kitchen processes and ensure consistent food quality at scale. And they power most of India's leading restaurant chains. Stay tuned for this gripping tale of taking fearless bets and learning from mistakes and please do subscribe to founder thesis on YouTube or any audio streaming platform.
00:01:17
Speaker
You've had a very long journey as a founder, starting from when you were in college itself. Give me a little bit of your background. What did your parents do? What did you decide to pursue for your graduation? And what led up to becoming an entrepreneur?
00:01:38
Speaker
Okay. So my dad used to work for a bank, a PSU bank. So because of that, we used to get transferred every now and then. So I did my schooling across maybe seven, eight schools. And by the time my college, I could speak and talk 26 languages, you know, that was a thing which sort of
00:02:01
Speaker
Like any other middle-class student, at that time, I was like, hey, I will take an IOT and then do something else. So that time between my 10th class and 12th was behind, okay, how do I prepare for the gene? And when I got my rank, I had passed, but I could not get to the main list. It was something called as the extended merit list.
00:02:30
Speaker
which would still get you into some reputed things like Indian Institute of Sciences and stuff like that. But there's also something on the petroleum university. But I was not interested in that kind of play, right? I still wanted to do engineering, but hence, it didn't work.
00:02:50
Speaker
And anyways, the idea was, you know, from childhood that thought was IIT Karo, then do some kind of a business, you know, that was some kind of a thought I always had in mind. I had to do business some point of time. But when I couldn't get into IIT, I settled on the next best opportunity that was there for me. Business, like, where did the business thing come in? I mean, you knew from childhood you wanted to do business.
00:03:20
Speaker
Somehow, intuitively, I was like, I wanted to start my own business and do a large company and earn a lot of money. I think that was a motivation factor that if you do your own business, you can earn a lot of money. That was the reason why I wanted to do a business.
00:03:42
Speaker
Okay, okay. So, when IIT didn't happen, I joined the college which was available for me. But my dream kept the same key engineering curve, then do business. Somewhere there was also cloud engineering and VM, then business.
00:04:01
Speaker
It was IIT, IAM, and then business. So IIT didn't happen. So I was thinking to me, then why shouldn't business not happen? It's not a thing. And yeah, so I said, I will try and do an India, if India doesn't.
00:04:18
Speaker
It's not ABC. If I can go from A to C, it is still possible. I kept looking for opportunities while still in college. Is there a way to do business? Somehow, a lot of dots were connected. Somehow, things worked out and hence, a startup happened.
00:04:40
Speaker
I was lucky that it happened. I didn't wake up every day and say, one thing led to the other and I ended up starting up while in college. So just tell me how you got your start.
00:04:54
Speaker
Because you came from a middle-class family, so obviously you didn't have any capital to start anything with. How did you start? It's a very interesting backstory to it. It'll take a couple of minutes for me to connect a few dots.
00:05:10
Speaker
So, in college, right from the first year in college, you know, college, when you go to college, there's a lot of events or some, all sort of seminars or symposiums that happen in college, right? And one of that was about the, about entrepreneurship. I was not very keen on going to that, but one of my friends said, and so let's go and eat at least.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I ended up going back to the college. They were like, you're out of hostel, but it's not great. And you say somebody's giving you free samosas. And then it's nothing to lose, you'll get a samosa. And in the event, there was a speaker from Chennai, and he used to run a mixed-size business consultancy firm. It was the McKinsey for SMEs. That was his positioning. He was talking about startups, entrepreneurship, this, that, and all.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that got me excited. And after the event, I went to him and said, hey, I want to start up at some point of time. And in your talk, you said a good way to start is to start working for somebody first, a startup kind of environment, and then do your own business. And that's like a short shot or a better way to succeed.
00:06:26
Speaker
And I don't know anybody, but Mike, can I come and work for you?" I was just out of the blue jacket, you know, nothing to lose, right? Just pick a shot. And I said, okay, here's my card. Why don't you come this weekend and we'll have a chat. I went to him and, you know, one thing led to the other. He said, okay, come and do an internship.
00:06:46
Speaker
I won't pay you anything, but you know, you will get to learn a lot of stuff. That was very interesting for me. Here, I'm working just like the first year in college in 2010 and something, maybe 10, 2011, somebody is off the unit internship. I was like, okay, I'm up for it. I was doing some internship activities.
00:07:06
Speaker
I picked up a lot of basics of business there. How to talk to clients? What is the meaning of a P&L? What is the difference between sales and marketing? What is the difference between operations and business development? What is cash flow? What is the difference between cash flow, balance sheet, and a P&L? A lot of basic things by just being in the system.
00:07:33
Speaker
You're like a mini-MB, I would say. At the end of the day, I was helping them in some BD activities and doing some marketing. That's what makes me excited. There was this college event where I was part of the committee which used to sell me boots.
00:07:58
Speaker
Two players kick out. Normally, in a college event, there are some booths. You sell it to some F&B shops. I was tasked by sending. There were about 10 odd booths. My committee could send 9. There was one booth that was still left out.
00:08:14
Speaker
that we could not send. So I went to the Dean and said that, hey, there's this one store that we could not send. Why don't you give it to me? And I'm willing to pay you the rent. It was some 15-20,000 rupees for a five-day store. I'm willing to pay. I won't pay now, but I'll pay at the end of the event because now I don't have money. I'll do some business here. I will sell some food. I'll make some money and just give you that 15-20,000.
00:08:43
Speaker
She was kind enough to do it. She said, okay, that seems to be a good proposition. You go and do it. So I got a booth there. I thought, okay, this was interesting that I got a booth. And that was my first business. He let me take that. Now I did an internship. I know what to do. And there was an opportunity. I said, okay, let's see what happens.
00:09:03
Speaker
The whole thought was, let's send Varappa and Jainjira, because many people in my college were from North and West, and this college was in Chennai, where getting Varappa was not easy. So, I said, okay, I will send Varappa. Now, me and I had another friend. We said, Cholo ya donna milk hai donte, let's send Varappa and Jainjira.
00:09:26
Speaker
Now, we had a booth, but we didn't have capital. You need to buy ingredients. You need to figure out where would you get your vadas from power. You need to get all that stuff. We wanted capital for the world power stall. We didn't have it. So we came up with an innovative concept.
00:09:45
Speaker
We said, we went to our friends and said, hey, you want Vadapao? So we have Vadapao for the expo and we are sending it now only. If you come there, it's 15 rupees, but if you book it now, it's 10 rupees. You get a five rupee off, but you need to buy a pack of 10. You get eight Vadapows and two Gelginos for a hundred bucks. If you come there and buy it's 150, 200 rupees, but here you get a discount, do you want to buy it?
00:10:11
Speaker
People were like, we will be in the expo and Pans in Hetto and Varafar Milra is a very good thing. I want the Varafar and we were able to convince all of them to pre-book the Varafars with us. So we printed some tokens with
00:10:26
Speaker
some kind of stamp saying that, okay, this is a vada pav kupani. And we went and sold some 50,000 rupees worth of vada pav for which we had got the working capital. Now I went to the vendors. I said, okay, we need the vadas, we need the pav, we need the chutney, we need the papers. We had working capital because of 50,000 rupees. We came and
00:10:48
Speaker
started sending. And because there were a lot of people who had pre-booked, my stall always had a huge number of people because people were coming and giving the coupons. And then what happened? Everybody thought, because crowd attracts crowd. So people came and started buying more.
00:11:04
Speaker
So instead of 15 rupees, I went from 15 rupees to 20 rupees because there are a lot of people. There was less supply with me and more demand. And I was able to really outsell every day, Matlab. By evening, 6 o'clock, all my stocks used to get exhausted. I had a freemium. And in the five days, we made a lot of money. And that was my first day stocks, actually.
00:11:24
Speaker
We paid the college and me and my friend had money to take out. So, I don't remember how much profit, but it was decent enough profit, I think, 60-70,000 rupees as a profit we made after paying everything. So, that sort of gave me confidence that I can do business.
00:11:44
Speaker
It had its own difficulties, but it gave me confidence that I can do business and I don't have to wait for college to get over. I don't have to wait for an MBA to happen. I can do business with that whole confidence that helped me start while in college. So you got a fairly good amount of profit from that one five-day event. How did it become a business from a five-day event to running a business?
00:12:14
Speaker
I learnt a lot of things in that five day event. That one thing was, I can do business. That full confidence that you get that I can do business. There are a lot of struggles to it. I didn't have capital. Nobody knew me. I didn't know a lot of things.
00:12:30
Speaker
Basically, what I learned at Ichiban, that was the company I interned with, I was telling you, right? What I learned there was more theoretical, but really putting your skin in the game was important. And somewhere the folks at Ichiban had also encouraged me that, you know, you should try something, you have nothing to lose.
00:12:47
Speaker
So I tried, it was really hard and tough, but end of the day, that whole feeling that I could do it was there in me. And that sort of said, you know, I wanted to, I had that convinced, yes, I can do business because once you taste blood, you want to do that again and again. But I then sort of figured out that, you know, I can do business and was waiting for the next big idea.
Challenges in Expansion and Automation
00:13:11
Speaker
I did not want to continue to do a Jeljira or a Vadapav stall. But yes, I could do business, but that whole thought process that I want to do something else was there. But what to do, I was not still aware of. But this was secondary in college.
00:13:27
Speaker
There was no plan. The whole idea was to graduate. By that time, I should do something. While interning at Ichiban, management consultancy, one of the clients for them was a large enough group called Hummer Group. They were taking consultancy services. They had work in mining. They had some salons and spas. They had some interest in Middle East. They were doing some oil jigs and all.
00:13:56
Speaker
So once the CEO was there and I was talking to him, he said, why don't you want, do you want to come and work with us? The same kind of work you're doing here. Do you want intern with me? And I said yes. So it's a large enough company. And the kind of work there at the intern was getting little more monotonous. And this was more exciting. And he said he'll pay me also. He said he'll pay me 10,000 internship per month. And that was more exciting. Right. And I said yes. And I took permission
00:14:25
Speaker
company and I joined there. The good thing here was I was more like it was not an internship, it was more like an executive assistant, it was the EA to the CEO. So it was just not a weekend job, it was an everyday job. So I used to finish college at 3-3.30, go to their office by 4 o'clock and till 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock I used to do work and all the weekends I used to do work there.
00:14:48
Speaker
Good thing was the engineering was not very hard. I could still sort of do okay. I would get a seven, seven and a half and my family was okay with it. They never told me, you should really focus on only studies. My family was very happy, not because of the money part, but because they're getting so much exposure.
00:15:09
Speaker
So here the work was really hard, you know. There was some jigat chromium mines. They were interested in some chromium mines in Jhachpur, Orissa. So I had to go there and do some work. Then they were inaugurating, they had salons and spas in Hyderabad. At that point of time, the CEO had the idea that we should go and do tier 3 city spa.
00:15:33
Speaker
So I went to a place called Rajmandri in Andhra. So there I had to finalize a place for a spa. Then I had to do marketing for that launch it. At the same time, there was a lot of emails and PPTs. He used to have meetings, I had to do PPTs. So the good thing, he did not treat me like a part-time employee. It was like an employee. Like I had college work, this PPT means editing.
00:15:58
Speaker
somewhere in the back, I used to open my Blackberry phone and do editing and send it to him. It was very exciting that you bought the Blackberry from the profits of that. Yeah, I bought a Blackberry. I was the only guy in the class to have a Blackberry.
00:16:16
Speaker
And do real work with it, right? Do real editing work in Microsoft Office and all that stuff. So, that was a very exciting time. I did that for one and a half year. The whole of summer holidays and winter holidays were spent in his office. We were going across the place.
00:16:38
Speaker
He had some interior projects in Winard in Kerala. So one day evening, he would say, let's go to Kerala. And I used to go. Attendance was low, but my friends were helping me, you know, proxy all day. And they were like, ensuring my attendance was up the mark. Somebody was helping me with project work. Just before the exam, I used to sort of, you know, what happens in engineering, right? You learn the last day and finish.
00:17:03
Speaker
So somehow I was getting my grades also done. I used to get money and because I was with the CEO, I used to go to all fancy restaurants for meetings. So I used to really enjoy it was a blast.
00:17:15
Speaker
I enjoyed it a lot for one and a half years, but then I said, yeah, this is good, but this is not mine. Right. I could continue to do this. I used to get from 10,000, I went to 20, 25,000 as a stipend. Yeah, college student is huge. Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:34
Speaker
This was in 2012. Hostel fee space paid for, everything paid for, still 25,000 in the account. Used to do air trips. I used to go to other places by a flight. But then I said, this is not exciting. It is good. I'm enjoying it. And I would have definitely a guaranteed job after college with him. But this is not mine. And this was in third year college.
00:18:01
Speaker
But I wanted to do something of mine. Then, because I used to go to all these restaurants, I used to go to Magdi, Domino's and all, I saw that QSR chains by default were serving global food. Nobody was selling Indian food.
00:18:16
Speaker
Indian food was like 10 outlet, 20 outlet chain. There was no brand that was out there doing global Indian food at scale. And I said, hey, there's a big opportunity and sort of that whole warapah story sort of kicked into me. Why don't I build the McDonald's of Indian food?
00:18:33
Speaker
That's when I said, OK, let me do it. It sounds very exciting. So I went to him. I said, I'm quitting. I want to do something in the F&B space. He was not very happy about it. He said, hey, college, you might not be able to do it and all that stuff. But I said, I want to take my risk. It's fine.
00:18:55
Speaker
This is not a problem, but it was a big risk, Madla quitting what I had and going all in. I took that risk anyways. I studied McDonald's very closely. I read a book called The Golden Arches by Ray Kroc. This was the founder of McDonald's who had written. I studied a lot of other books in this space and all. And I said, okay, let's build the McDonald's for Indian food.
00:19:22
Speaker
So, I had a friend who had a, by the McDonald's book, I knew that location is going to be very, very important. So, the first McDonald's eventually came in Chennai at a place called Skywalk in Nandambakam. I said, I'm just going to get a space just opposite McDonald's.
00:19:38
Speaker
because they have, of course, done all the hard work. So I'm just going to not do that hard work. And I found a guy in college and who had a space, I said, I'm going to rent it out. I can't pay at once, but I'll pay your profit share and all your name. Like, I was good in convincing him. He said, okay, I'll give you the space.
00:19:58
Speaker
And then I figured out somebody who could give me the batter, you know, like the menu was at least those as what are just four items on the menu. I read in the McD book that he kept, he said something called kiss, keep it simple, stupid. Right. So I said, okay, my menu is going to be just four items.
00:20:17
Speaker
Magdi sells burgers, fries, juice. I'm going to sell ugly dosa and coffee. So I just was copying it. Got the same space. I named the location Mukunda Foods. The reason why I named it was in Chennai, I saw all the restaurants were God's name. Sarvana, Bhavan, Krishna, Bhavan, you know, Murgan, Bhavan and all. I said, if it's not God's name, people will not come in. So Mukunda Foods, Raktahes, Kanam.
00:20:47
Speaker
And that's how Krishna, Krishna, Krishna. It is Krishna's other name. Okay, Krishna's other name, okay. So I said, okay, we'll call it Mukunda foods. So I got the name, I got the space and we opened the outlet. So one of my friend had a restaurant. So we said, Vaha said, better.
00:21:08
Speaker
we will make fresh dosas here and it was a nice place you know bright lights large screens nicely just have the whole vibe of a McD was recreated here stand and eat come you get food very quickly you get out very fast
00:21:25
Speaker
I still remember that at 40 rupees, we had a combo where you get two idlis, one vada, one coffee and one dosa, mini dosa. So it was a steal. We used to get that whole breakfast and people were queuing up. We were able to do good business. And that's when I said here, hey, we have nailed it. We have a product we have done. It's my business, my place, and now I'm going to
00:21:51
Speaker
Just expand. How much money were you making in the first outlet?
00:21:56
Speaker
So we didn't lose money. So all the savings I had from my internship, I put it here. And my dad also gave me some money, my friend's place. So I didn't have to pay heavy rentals. All I had to do was interiors, which was according to me like two, two and a half like with me back then. And we kick started and from day one, I was breaking when I was not losing money because it was my friend's father who was supplying better. He was kind enough to not take money in advance. So customers would pay me. It was a negative working capital.
00:22:26
Speaker
So I used to get customer money, then pay the vendor, then pay the rent. And I was not taking the salary out of it. So it was a negative working capital. So I could just continue to be very efficient there. And there was another friend who came and said, yeah, I also have a space. Can you come and do an outlet there? And then I wanted to go to my second and third outlet.
00:22:47
Speaker
So, sort of accelerating things a little faster here. So, I went to my second and third outlet also. This was almost by end of engineering then, fourth year of engineering. I opened my second outlet also. But that's when all the tough things in life started for me. Till then, it was a dream journey. I opened, did a business, good profit, good business. And I was like, I'll do this fast and buy a Ferrari.
00:23:12
Speaker
But life's not so simple, right? Then my second outlet was a disaster.
00:23:21
Speaker
I could not maintain the consistency and quality that was in the first outlet. People would complain. Then the challenges in the first outlet also started coming up. By then I partnered with my friend and roommate. There was this guy, Sudheep. He was my classmate and roommate. So we both started this QSR Mukunda foods.
00:23:48
Speaker
Initially, both of us were in the first outlet, so we were able to do a lot of things better. But when two outlets happened, we were not able to maintain consistency and quality even in the first outlet. So repeat customers. Then I read somewhere that NPS is very important. You need to ensure that your NPS scores are really high. We were not able to get... NPS means Net Promoter Score, which is like asking your customer, would you recommend this business to another customer? Yes.
00:24:16
Speaker
So, basically, you have three parameters. One is a Detractor, then there is a Neutral and then there is a Promoter. If you get a score of 9 and 10, only it's a Promoter score on 10. Anything 7 and 8 is Detractor. 7 and 8 is Neutral. 1 to 6 is Detractor. I was horrified to see so many detractors. No recommendation. Repeat business in your data and it was very sad for me.
00:24:43
Speaker
You basically figured out that managing it needs personal attention. And if your personal attention is split, then it is not the consistency of quality goes down, basically. Correct, correct. And then it becomes a lifestyle business and I'm doing only one outlet, I'm not doing multiple outlets, then I'm not earning money. That means
00:25:05
Speaker
My Ferrari would not come, right? So, me and Sudip are like, this is not happening. This is like a brick wall we attend and we're not able to move. We really perceived hard. We couldn't really get consistency because what happens in production is your customer is coming every day or whenever your customer comes, you need to ensure that same consistency quality should be there.
00:25:32
Speaker
If you are selling a dosa to somebody in Chennai, your dosa should be damn good. It should be crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. That's golden hue. That dosa should smile at you, basically. If you're not doing that, people aren't coming to you.
00:25:49
Speaker
And that's where we were failing. I'm not able to consistently give a dosa because dosa was 80% of my revenue. And that's when we figured out, I went a little deep and understood, I don't have problems in coffee.
00:26:05
Speaker
Coffee is also made fresh. Dosa is also made fresh. But coffee is a problem because coffee was made through a machine and Dosa was made manually. I then realized, yeah, this is the problem. I am relying on skill. I'm a people dependent company, not a process dependent company. And being an engineer, I was like, wow, I found out the problem.
00:26:25
Speaker
you don't find a problem, you're in frustration, but you know what to fix, then it becomes better for you because now you put in your entire energy and effort to sort of fix it. So, simple solution. Let's go buy a Rosa machine.
00:26:40
Speaker
That simple solution didn't happen because there was nobody in the world who had a Dosa machine for an outlet. I went to everywhere, trust me. I went to CFTRA, which was a government central food technology research institute. It's a government institute. I said, do you have a Dosa machine? I went to all the markets, websites. I went to the professors at IAT. I said, yeah, do you have a Dosa machine? You know somebody was a Dosa machine.
00:27:06
Speaker
There was nobody. I was thinking, wow, there's no Dosa machine. I need to build it. I was an engineer. So, you know, I was like, right. And this was almost was the end of my engineering end of fourth year. I said, yeah, we will make a Dosa machine now.
00:27:22
Speaker
So again, I went to a lot of my friends, I went to a couple of friends in mechanical. So there was a formula one team, there was a team that used to make racing cars for college. So I said, yeah, you guys come there was our college back then I had made a satellite as well, right. So when they found out somebody was good at embedded systems, they will make a Dosa machine. So it got like a kick ass team said, you're all just going to build a Dosa machine. So we spent a lot of time.
00:27:48
Speaker
built a dosa machine, put it in the outlet and was like happy. Now I have a machine that could make Chennai level quality dosas at a speed I like, at a cost I like, and everything takes the boxes and customer was great. Still there was one here, will people be okay seeing the machine-made dosa? But when I put it in the outlet, that was when people were happy. They were like, okay with it. Here, as long as my dosa is good, they were okay with it.
00:28:17
Speaker
And word got out and a lot of media started covering us. The Hindu put us on page one. Hey, this outlet sells dosas from a machine. Times of India covered. NDTV did a story meant by the Hindus sometimes they did a story. We were just all over the press.
00:28:35
Speaker
This attracted a lot of restaurant owners calling me. They called and said, can you sell the machine to me? But a lot of restaurant owners started calling and saying that, can you sell that machine to us? Because I have the same problem. My chef doesn't come on time. The biggest reason I'm not able to go from one outlet to 10 outlets is
00:29:02
Speaker
and not able to make consistent food at scale. And then I figured out, hey, I have solved for something bigger. I was thinking I was a student, I was an engineering guy, not from the F&B or the food industry, and hence not able to maintain operations. But the Annapunas of the world are coming to me and saying, yeah, I have same problem. The technology you have built, can you sell it to me? And that was, I think initially I was resisting to it.
00:29:32
Speaker
So, people used to call me because they saw the story on the press and TV and everybody and they used to call, can you sell the machine? Initially, I was saying, no, no, no, a competition will have a machine. One day, there was this guy from Rishikesh, running a restaurant called Madras Cafe. He called me and said, sir, I want this dosa machine. Just to put him off, I was not in a good mood, maybe. I said, yeah, it's there, but it's 2 lakh rupees. He said, OK, send me your bank account details. I just sent it to him.
00:30:01
Speaker
One hour later, he calls and said, sir, Phogia transfer. I was like, what are you saying? You sent me 2 lakh. And he had put in that 2 lakh rupees. I was like, shit, man, this is real. Back then, a good business day would be 20,000 rupees for me. And here, somebody had sent me 2 lakh and calling me kimashinkavara.
00:30:25
Speaker
I was like, yeah, this is a bigger business. So, let's go and really build this out. And then whoever called, I said, 2 lakh rupee machine. People would negotiate. I'll give for one and a half lakh. I was like, seriously? Somebody willing to put that amount of money? By the way, the machine, I didn't even know what's the cost of the machine bank then.
00:30:44
Speaker
Right, then I graduated by then and then I realized let's become a kitchen tech company.
Pivot to Kitchen Tech Innovation
00:30:57
Speaker
help everybody become a McDonald's, help restaurants, outlets, QSRs, F&D industry, take my technology and be faster by making dosas. So I graduated in 2014. I then moved to Bangalore.
00:31:17
Speaker
raised some capital from Indian Angel Networks. So I had registered the company back in college itself, so that was not a challenge. I was very confident, this is going to be my future. Mukunda Foods, private limited, the registered address was bomb. So I don't know if college had any issue, but I was born and registered.
00:31:35
Speaker
Nobody tell, now we have moved it out to somewhere else, we have moved it to our current office, but then it was fine. So we raised capital for management. There were two co-founders. Yeah, me and Sudip. Two co-founders, you and yours. Okay. Yeah, so both of us had not taken a job.
00:31:54
Speaker
How did you figure out that you need to raise funds? This was because of your Ichiban consulting experience. You knew that you have to raise funds first. So, I knew that to build because I had figured out that this will be a technology play and not a QSR play.
00:32:10
Speaker
I figured at some point I need to raise capital. I think 2013 Flipkart was all out there. They had done a $10 million round or something from Excel. Funding was a thing. I was going to all these business plan competitions.
00:32:29
Speaker
At one of the competition, there was this Indian Engine Network was the thing and they said whoever wins gets a chance to pitch to the Indian Engine Network. I won the competition. I went for a pitch. Well, still in fourth year in college, the pitch was done. They said, okay, we are going to put in a crore into the company, equity money. At the end, when they were giving a term shift, they realized I was in college.
00:32:53
Speaker
So there was a term in my term sheet that said, if you don't take up a job at the end of your engineering, this term sheet is valid. So before I graduated, I had technically a crore, raised a crore because term sheet is sort of good. And my dad was like scared. He said, yeah, there is no way or not somebody will pay you a crore. He's a banker, right?
00:33:20
Speaker
He was asking, what for that? He said, should you repay the money? I said, no, I don't have to repay the money. Then he thought it was a scam. Who the hell is going to give you a crore of equity money? But it was true. I graduated and then the due diligence happened. And by early 2015, I had a crore in the bank or I had a term sheet. You graduated in routine.
00:33:49
Speaker
14 I graduated, the money actually came in 2014. And your pitch to Indian Angels was for the QSL or for building machines? Kitchen tech. It was kitchen tech. I said that we will do both.
00:34:09
Speaker
Another interesting fact, when I went for the pitch, I didn't know who people were in the room. There were a lot of bunch of people wearing suits and all fancy suits and all. At the end, when I spoke to them, I realized Mr. Munjal was in the room. He was the founder of Sunil Kar Munjal from the hero group was there.
00:34:27
Speaker
Ajay Chaudhary was there, HCL CEO. Ajay Kaul was there, who was the Domino CEO back then. They all figured out this a very good business to put in money. And then I got scared. My God, these are the people in the room. And I was so confidently speaking so many things. I was speaking about India growth story, speaking about a ton of things. And I would not maybe do if I knew who was there. I was really scared.
00:34:53
Speaker
So, I had money, I had a business plan, I knew that we need tech, I had a co-founder, so few things ticked. So, from 2013 to 2015 was a really bad time because I realized that I could not scale the business, spent a lot of time to get my product and then raised capital.
00:35:13
Speaker
So, it went up, came down and finally I raised capital, I moved to Bangalore. Because back then Chennai had a lot of power cuts. There were 16-hour power cuts at the end and I realized, yeah, I'll send you up. How can you run 16-hour power cuts? So, moved to Bangalore. Started
00:35:32
Speaker
Then it occurred to me that till in college, it was fine. If you failed all the other student, he failed. But now you had capital. You had people believe in you. You had a team. I started doing my first hires. Then it became really serious.
00:35:48
Speaker
Money in the bank was not exciting, but we had to really go and sell to customers, build a real sales team, build a real manufacturing team, build a real service network. Things started becoming very real then. So, the next biggest issue I had was, okay, as a story I was able to sell, you will sell these machines, I have a couple of customers, proof of concept is good. But to take a proof of concept and really build a business out of it,
00:36:18
Speaker
was not easy because there was no hardware company in India that you could look up to. There was no set business model. There was a lot of SaaS and e-commerce players that was out there, but there was nobody to look up to who had designed hardware technology in India, who had built in India.
00:36:38
Speaker
There were a lot of German, Italian stories that you had Despa, you had the Ferrari, you had a lot of those things, but nobody in India had to look up. So I couldn't go to people and say, I'm stuck here. So there was a lot of self-learning to do. There was a lot of failure that happened. How do you hire a team? Because if you went and hired somebody in design and thing, they would say, what should I copy? Literally.
00:37:02
Speaker
because that's what Indian hardware companies are doing. I was like, you don't have to copy, you don't have to build this machine.
00:37:09
Speaker
It's like clueless. How do I build it? I said, okay, this is not interesting. So, we need to get a different set of people who thought about this like a college project. There's nothing to copy. You need to design a machine that could make dosas, that could make dosas that are customizable and this machine works anywhere with any kind of data. That was the case and there was no machine anywhere.
00:37:37
Speaker
And it should make that very crisp authentic dosa. So, it was a big challenge. So, I used to hire people, not basis their experience, but by their problem solving capability. So, if you usually in a mechanical place, when you do interviews, you ask a bunch of technical questions. Hey, can you define this formula and all? We didn't do that.
00:38:04
Speaker
The time somebody came for an interview, we used to give them a problem solving. So, one of the questions I used to give them is, there are two ceiling fans. One fan works, the other fan doesn't work. So, you need to design a contraption that using this fan, you should run both the fans. Design it for me. So, I used to see how people design. Some people would just do it and say, if you change the band,
00:38:33
Speaker
I was like, but that won't work because one will work clockwise, other will go anti-clockwise. How do you do it? Then somebody said this, the actual good people, they would not only design a good mechanism, but they would go back to saying that which component, where would this component be available and so on and so forth.
00:38:54
Speaker
And then in the interior, I would add one more layer to it. I would say, okay, now say I want to turn off only one fan, how would I do it? How would you disengage it? And I wanted to see people, how would they think out of the box?
00:39:07
Speaker
And that helped me do my first real R&D hires. People who could think of a solution, not follow a playbook. So we got those people in. Then they started really developing the machine. My co-founder Sudip was very good in terms of process. He really built a very good manufacturing process.
00:39:27
Speaker
to ensure that the R&B team which built was able to do it. One of the very good person who joined us back then was Rakesh. He used to work for HCL, the Hindustan Aeronautic Limited. He was on the Tejas Aircraft project. He built a fantastic Kaveri engine concept was his.
00:39:50
Speaker
But he was not excited by working there. It's very slow. And he did great work for the DosaMatic. So he joined as an R&D intern. And later we would make him the CTO and then the co-founder at Mukundapur. So now we are three co-founders. So Rakesh joined me then. He was taking care of the R&D. Sudhip was taking care of manufacturing and after sales service. And then because both of these were fixed, I used to go and do the sales.
00:40:18
Speaker
So it took us a lot of time. People would say, yeah, you have a product in 2015, you had raised funds, but my actual sales happened in 2018.
Revolutionizing Global Cuisines
00:40:30
Speaker
So it's three years of real hard work to really, because it's not software, it's really hardware, it's getting a lot of things right. But we were at it because we knew that the industry wanted it. We knew that this was something that was required.
00:40:47
Speaker
So eventually, built the Dosamatic. We figured out how to do product sales. We figured out how to do manufacturing at scale. We figured out after sales service. Yeah, and that's how the Dosamatic came out.
00:41:05
Speaker
Amazing. Can you help me understand what is the way in which it cooks a dosa? Is it like you have a flat tawa? Typically the commercial dosa is like a big flat rectangle shaped tawa with a fire underneath it on which a human being takes a cup of batter and then puts it in a circular motion. So what did your machine do?
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, so when we were designing the machine, I had an insight that you can't mimic a human. First idea was if I say somebody make a dosa machine, they would say, okay, how does a person who takes better, force it, does this activity. Once it's ready, he takes it off.
00:41:53
Speaker
that circular thing. But then I thought to myself that if you wanted a machine to go fast, a human being runs like this, right? You run like this. But a machine, you don't build a humanoid to run. You take a machine and put a deal to it. You put a car, you make a car, you don't do a humanoid. So you don't want to mimic. End output. Don't think about
00:42:18
Speaker
Copying, you know, that's what I think a lot of global robotics players do wrong, right? They make machines mimicking humanoids, they make robotic arms, which are super expensive and a very wrong way to do kitchen robotics. We said, okay, let's focus only on the output. What is output? You need a crisp dosa. Okay, let's come back from a crisp dosa. What was the backside of a dosa? It was a flat
00:42:45
Speaker
elliptical thing. Now, because of engineering, you know how to make elliptical thing is you make a small ellipse, you keep elongating it and becomes a longer ellipse. When I say ellipse, it's a long thing. So if you look at dosamatic, you can go to our website mukundafoods.com and see dosamatic. So what we did was we made a machine. It drops better. You just drops it.
00:43:15
Speaker
And then there is a spreader that spreads it. So you do a small round, but when you spread a small round, it becomes a large round. And once the thing is spread, there is a system that
00:43:29
Speaker
There is peristaltic pump. It's a pump that sprays oil on the dosa. And then the dosa cooks and it peels it off. Now the whole intelligence comes into play. Okay, what's the amount of batter? Depending on the amount of batter, the cooking time changes. Depending on the cooking time, the temperature and the things change. Depending on the size of the batter, the oil changes. Everything is algorithmic.
00:43:51
Speaker
So, what we did was we sat with our chef and we said, okay, you make a small dosa, you make a thin dosa, crisp dosa. We kept seeing what and all changes he did. So, for a long dosa, the amount of cooking time was 65 seconds. For a small dosa, it was 50 seconds. Okay, we programmed that. Okay, when does he add oil? When does he do? So, we made that and we sort of extrapolated all that stuff.
00:44:17
Speaker
So all that intelligence went into the machine, okay, now this, this, that and all. So sort of that gave you a machine that you just go press a button, the machine drops the batter, spreads it, adds oil, cooks it. Once it's ready, it peels it and gives it on the table and it also cleans the pan automatically. There's no Jhado or anything. There's a very strong spray of water jet that sort of cleans the pan.
00:44:43
Speaker
And the spreading is like through the way your windshield wipers or something like that is spreading the matters. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. I am.
00:44:57
Speaker
yet to see a dosamatic in real life. Why is that? Is it that it's mostly used for cloud kitchens? So not really. Our machines are not only for cloud. So there are more than 3000 machines out there.
00:45:15
Speaker
It's just that you're eating, you might have eaten a lot of dosas from our machine. It's just you don't know that it's from our machine. If you're going to an Adiga's in Bangalore, or an Adia Rananda Bhavan, or an Annapurna in Coimbatore, you know, Kamath Karkek brand, Westme. You know, all of them are even PBR today in Delhi, if you go, they sell dosas from Dosamatic. It's just here you're eating, you don't know.
00:45:43
Speaker
So, now going to the larger story that what we found success with Dosamatic. So, to cut a long story short, you know, and then we could whatever details you want, we could go into that is we have now become a full-blown kitchen robotics company. Dosamatic was the
00:46:02
Speaker
stepping stone. We can make a machine that makes dosas consistently and customers are happy. Today, we have automated about 90-95% of global cuisine. We have an automatic biryani machine. We have an automatic Indian gravies. We have done Chinese automatically, parathas, burgers, sandwiches, pizzas, momos, French fries, stamosas.
00:46:32
Speaker
What started as a Dosamatic step by step by step, now we have automated. So it's top 80% of Indian QSR brands use our machines in their outlets to cook food. And many of them
00:46:47
Speaker
They have gone from 0 to 1 by themselves, but they're 1 to 10 and 10 to 100 need our automation. And that's where we came in and said, okay, you want a samosa machine to make samosas, we give you. You want something for Biryani, we have a machine, we have for India, and we have for Chinese, we have for various cuisines, you know, that's how we are automated.
00:47:08
Speaker
Now, I would say we are the world's largest kitchen robotics company. There's nobody who has 10,000 kitchens that have automated and we have done it.
00:47:21
Speaker
Wow. Amazing. Amazing. I want to understand some of these other products also, like what is the form factor for the Biryani Maker or the Samosa Maker or the Momo Maker. Just help me understand how they automate their work.
00:47:39
Speaker
Before that, I'll tell you why we did that. That's again very interesting story there. So many people who bought DosaMatic came to us. I don't want to name brands here. They came to us and said that the issue of what you have done with DosaMatic is amazing. But I want a machine to make Chinese food for me.
00:48:00
Speaker
fried rice noodles, starters, soups is a very big category. And it's very difficult for me to scale that brand because everywhere I can just scale the master, the Chinese chef to keep doing it. Can you make a Chinese food making machine for me?
00:48:14
Speaker
I said, I can do it, but I don't have the capital to put in to do the whole R&D and product development and all, but I had a capability. So I said, okay, you want this machine, I can build it, I don't have the capital. So I told them, okay, what do you do? You invest in the R&D for this product, you put in that money, I will make it for you.
00:48:37
Speaker
I will sell this product exclusively for you for one year. Nobody else will have it. So you get an edge in the market. Nobody has the machine. But if I don't do the machine, I will refund you the money. That's the agreement.
00:48:49
Speaker
And this brand was fine with it. They said, it seems to be, it's risky, but they somehow believed in me. They said, okay, this guy has done the Dosa machine, so he might do the Chinese machine. Similar agreements with other brands. Somebody, there was a very large Momo chain. I'll take the name WoW Momo. So we went to WoW Momo, Sagar, and said, Sagar Daryani was the co-founder. We said, you have a problem in trying these things. I will solve it for you.
00:49:15
Speaker
We went to a Biryani player and said, I will make a Biryani machine for you. So we went to the customers and made them invest in the R&D. By the way, it's not cheap. I know brands who have invested 3-4 crore rupees in R&D with me before having the first machine out. So they had a real pain problem. They invested in R&D and it was a risk for me also because if I couldn't build that product, I would go bankrupt.
00:49:43
Speaker
Right. I would not have the money to pay them. How would you pay two crore back, right? You spent that. So we made the customer invest in the R&D. And my team was really, it was a real doer. There's no way you make a machine.
00:50:02
Speaker
But if you don't do it, you're screwed. And we took a lot of bets. We did Chinese, we did Biryani, we did Parathas, we did fried food, we did Momos. Within 2018 to 2020, in the two years span, we built five machines.
00:50:21
Speaker
Right. And good thing is, because these were all really successful, the team was really at it. Marlabhi just went all out to do it. We, the anchor customer, gave us a bulk order. They came and said 500 Chinese making machines, each cost 2 and a half lakh. So they gave us that order. The War Momo gave us a large order. Everybody gave a large order. And once the exclusivity finished,
00:50:52
Speaker
We went all out to sell the machines because we had an anchor customer. Because an anchor customer, the largest one was everybody. I said, wait for a year. It's not for you. And once exclusivity ended, we started opening up the product.
00:51:07
Speaker
So with zero investment in equity, R&D, so we had a product, we built a large enough, maybe a large decent enough business which could do. Now, you asked me a question, how does a machine work, right? I'll speak about a product called Walkie, which sells very, very well for us.
00:51:31
Speaker
fried rice, noodles, starters, soups, dal makhni, chicken butter masala, paneer masala, pastas, everything. Right. So, in... It's like a... Like a kadai... Automation of kadai, basically. Automation of kadai. Okay. So, what we saw was, kadai me ke otaan, you put all the ingredients and then you toss it.
00:51:53
Speaker
So, I did not want to toss food because then you need a robotic arm. If you toss more, the food flies out. If you toss less, it won't toss well. So, my team was really thinking here and this was six months into the project, the customer had invested a crore with us.
00:52:11
Speaker
We had still not found a solution on how to toss food. And this is a real story. We were all sitting and brainstorming. And there was a construction happening in front of our factory. And there was a concrete mixer. You remember a concrete mixer. They put sand. They put this and that. They call it mixes. And after that, they take out. One guy said, I'm going to concrete machine banana.
00:52:38
Speaker
That night, everybody went and made a round thing, round kadai. They put a motor on the back. We inclined it, put a heating solution and we put some rice and we started rotating it. That it worked. They said, okay, this is zero to one thinking. So if you go to mukundafoods.com and see the product Waki, that's what it is. It is a concrete mixer that has a heater attached to it. And some of the ingredients fall automatically into it.
00:53:09
Speaker
So it was a lot of zero to one fingers. It would probably be the angle change and all would probably happen. It would need to be straight when putting the ingredients, then tilt it. Like how the concrete mixture changes angles. Exactly. So we went and did another step because we wanted Indian and Chinese to happen in the same kadai. So if you look, Indian food is stirred. Chinese food is tossed.
00:53:35
Speaker
So what we did was if there was a kadai that was like this, that would toss it. But once you do the angle to be say closer to 90, it would stir. So the same machine stirs, tosses, mixes, has energy. And that was like aha moment for us.
00:53:57
Speaker
Amazing and how does the ingredient go into it? Is that also automated like feeding in the ingredients? So we started and this is a perspective that we hold very strong at the company that we will be initially automated here everything falls automatically right the right we had a container that holds oil then some masalas then seasonings and all what we did so what we realized was
00:54:25
Speaker
Don't automate everything. Make it a cobalt, not a robot. Cobalt means there's a person
00:54:34
Speaker
who you tell now you add one spoon of oil, he will add. Because in India, you will get India, people availability is not an issue. Skilled people availability at skin is an issue. Right. So we said you're not to the restaurant owner, the proposition was this. You're not fighting people. You're not letting people go. Your own person, you're giving him wings.
00:54:57
Speaker
Instead of a rickshaw puller running, you are giving him an auto or give him an Uber car. Here he is going to sit comfortably, do a throttle and do more passengers and can ride longer and that was a value proposition. You are not firing people.
00:55:14
Speaker
You are helping your person make food faster, more consistent, that ensures that you're able to turn faster tables, able to maintain consistency, and you expand faster. So it was a very win-win proposition. So we de-automated a lot of things. We removed, okay, don't put everything because the machine becomes very expensive. Instead of a 50,000 rupee machine, now it's a 5,000 rupee machine. And just giving you a machine that removes the skill, not the person.
00:55:44
Speaker
Right. Said today, if you had a wokki with you Akshay, and maybe you know how to cook food, but maybe you don't know how to cook red thai curry. Right. With wokki you can. You can cook Chinese, Indian, Japanese, everything. Because the machine, another interesting thing, right, we were not or even we are not a competition to chef.
00:56:12
Speaker
Right. Because the machine is a dumb machine. The machine learns from the chef. So the layer of technology, whichever I did today is the machine learns from the chef how to make a thigh gravy and how this chef makes a thigh gravy. And that is replicated in the machine. So if you're a brand, it's you're getting. How do you achieve that? So a lot of tech. How do you achieve the learnings?
00:56:39
Speaker
So the machine learns from the chef and that's where
Advanced Techniques and Eco Innovations
00:56:44
Speaker
we play a key customer success role and that's what we realized, that we work with the chef.
00:56:50
Speaker
to understand his heat patterns, his temperature patterns, his timing, his ingredients, everything and the machine learns it. Let me give you a very simple example. Let's speak about samosa. Do you know 6 crores samosas are consumed in the country? It's a huge number of samosas.
00:57:10
Speaker
And frying samosas is an art. For those of you who might not know, you don't just toss samosas in a hot pan and remove it. What happens in samosa frying, you start at 120 degrees.
00:57:28
Speaker
cook it for 1 minute, then increase the temperature to 130, cook for X amount of time. And step by step, you start at 120, go to 180. At 180, and every 10 degrees of temperature, the amount of cooking time is very different. Once you reach us there, you take out. And that's when you get a very good samosa. That's when you need a halwa, you're a very good samosa.
00:57:51
Speaker
There's also a visual judgment you have to make that this looks cooked. I guess the color and all. Color and all. And then you change the temperature. So what we did, we sat with a lot of chefs, award-winning chefs who make samosas and a lot of halloies.
00:58:09
Speaker
he puts it at temperature, how much does he increase, note it down, note it down, note it down and then teach it to the machine. So, today in my automated, we have a product called EcoFryer. We have maybe 5000 of them on the field. So, if you go to the samosa setting, it's a design in such a way that it starts at that keeps on changing, changing, changing. Once the thing is ready, it automatically comes up.
00:58:31
Speaker
So you put samosas, once the temperature is ready, the basket would dip, change the oil temperature depending on what samosas you put and what is the quantity of samosas. So the temperature curve for one samosa to 100 samosas is a very different curve. So it will understand the samosas you put through the menu, take to the temperature curve once it comes out. So no matter what, you get that excellent samosa. So today you have maybe a thousand
00:59:00
Speaker
organized players in Samosa, 1000 brand outlets, and everybody uses my Samosa fryer, eco fryer. Similarly with burgers, similarly with pakodas, French fries. So another interesting thing, our eco fryer makes the food more crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. And this is what we learned from our, the machine learned from our chef.
00:59:29
Speaker
How does it achieve that, like crispy outside, soft inside? Yeah, so I don't actually, maybe, if you're seeing your grandmom cook pakodas, what she does is she does a double dip, then she removes it and fries it again. So what we did in our eco fryer, that today if you put French fries, it goes in at 180 degrees, cooks for two minutes.
00:59:55
Speaker
Okay, comes out for 30 seconds, that temperature of oil goes from 180 to 185 in that 5 seconds, sorry, in that 20 seconds, goes for a second dip and comes out. So, first dip, it became that mushy and stopped. Once it goes for a second flash throw at a higher temperature, by the time it's going inside, it comes out. So, by the time it's going inside, it comes out. So, by the time it's going inside, it comes out.
01:00:23
Speaker
Right. So today anybody uses my automation, gets a very consistent colored product. We have something called 3D frying also. You know, it's too much to explain on a call, but yeah, you should visit our website and maybe check. So what it does is it does a 3D frying. So the color is uniform. The temperature curves are very good. And with double frying, double dip, you get a crispy output. And customers are amazed. Wow.
01:00:54
Speaker
The product can be sitting anywhere, like in airports also we have our machines, any airport, I think there will be no airport in India where my machines aren't there. So, it's working across the place, you don't need human intervention, you don't need that, but you're getting a great output, an Indian product. Samosa one way, pakoda one way, cutlets one way. So, we went into each and every product, designed it bottoms up with a share and helping brands grow. That sort of becomes our core proposition today.
01:01:25
Speaker
What is the form factor for the eco fryer? I used to work at McDonald's, my very first employment while I was in college was at McDonald's, so I used the fryers over there for the french fries, etc. You will remember, I think it would be a fitco or a fry master fryer that you have.
01:01:49
Speaker
So what happens in a Magdi fryer, you put your food, you press a button, there's a countdown timer. Once it beeps, you go and take it out. So what we do is we have motorized that action. So the basket is always on the top. You put your fries, you press a button that this is French fries.
01:02:09
Speaker
number of portions, two portion, three portion, four portion, then it will ensure that the right temperature is maintained in the oil. Once it's maintained, it goes in, dips, cooks, comes out, goes for a second dip. Once it's ready, it comes out. It looks like a normal fryer. The form factor looks the same, but then it has motorized basket. Then it has the whole intelligence and connectivity. It speaks to the cloud.
01:02:36
Speaker
So, tomorrow McDonald's wants to launch nuggets. Just cooking time, temperature profiles are very different. You don't have to go to every outlet and train people. You sit in your central office, you update the fryers. All the fryers get an update and your chicken nuggets are like to go with a different temperature profile or whatever it is.
01:02:59
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. And the oil cleaning process happens manually or is that also automated? We have a product which automatically filters the oil and we have made it for Indian type of cooking. Those Indian cooking is very different compared to international cooking.
01:03:21
Speaker
I think in MACD you use Magnesol and filter paper, you have a filtration on the dump. So here it documents, there's a protocol filter, it just goes and filters the oil and ensures that the oil is good. So as a staff, as a MACD teammate in your steps, you don't have to go running back to the fryer once you listen the beep, it will automatically come out, right? And it costs... Yeah.
01:03:45
Speaker
lesser because MacD in India imports flyers, right? Now, because you're buying in India, you design, develop manufacturing, it's a lot less cheaper with the tech, right? So, I don't want to name brands, but a lot of MNC brands in India.
01:04:02
Speaker
are working with us right now and using some of the machines in their kitchens. And I think in the next four, five years, India will be supplying to the global outlets opening rather than today, India buying the equipment from US or other countries. Wow.
01:04:24
Speaker
How does the burger automation happen? Again, since I'm from McDonald's, so I've done all of this like burgers and all that. So how does that happen? Burgers, right. Today, starting from a good flipping burger, to Louis burger, to Burger Singh, Biggie's burger, they all use our machines.
01:04:43
Speaker
in burger automation. So, we do a lot of work in burger. So, let's break down a burger, right? You have the buns, which you need to toast, which is not a very difficult thing. Then you have the patty, either you fry it or grill it, right? So, fryer, same as I told you, we have the automated fryer. So, you put it, it will go, dip, cook, comes out. Yeah, eco fryer. Eco fryer.
01:05:06
Speaker
Now, grilling is a big challenge. I'm sure in McDonald's, you know, you put it, then you need to put that steam thing, put some water and then flip it and all. So we have done a very simple thing. Okay, we said...
01:05:21
Speaker
We took two pans, one on the bottom, one on the top, right? You put a patty or how many patties you want, you select your dinner chicken patty. Then the top pan comes, grills it. Once it's ready, it goes up and there's a lever that pushes it out. So you get grilled patties. So why is faster? No need to flip. No need to flip.
01:05:46
Speaker
and no need to stand in front of it. It's exactly to that temperature, to that degree and that pressure. So, because you've been at burgers, initially the pressure is different at the end, the pressure is different. So, what the thing does, it has a pressure sensor in it. Initially it comes and presses it a lot, then it opens, then it comes and just touches it. There are some brands in India who do galati kabab in our machine.
01:06:13
Speaker
like ITC has cloud kitchen, their Galati Kaabab, it's a very people who have it and it's a very soft, very delicate product. So our machines help them to Galati Kaababs. In Mumbai, there's a brand called HOB house of Biryan. They make some of the best Biryan in the country, right? They use my Biryani machine. The Galati Kaababs are cooked out. Tibbs, frankly, very famous, frankly, brand. Biryan is the Waki or B?
01:06:41
Speaker
No, no, no. So, it's a product called Biryani. So, Biryani doesn't do dumb. So, we have a product called Jico, which makes Biryani for you. How does it perform? Okay. So, it looks like a cylinder, right?
01:07:04
Speaker
Cooking biryani needs three types of heat. I think people in the FNB industry or if you cook biryani, you'll understand. Initially, you boil rice, then you cook it with protein or meat or vegetables, and then you do the dum.
01:07:21
Speaker
So, you need dry heat, sorry, you need the wet heat, then you need the dry heat, then you need steaming. So, we built a machine called Rico, where you just put the rice. Initially, it automatically takes the water. The core ingredient in a biryani is the rice. You need to get your rice really right. It should be fluffy. It should not be soggy. At the same time, it should not be al dente or undercooked.
01:07:45
Speaker
So, the proportion of rice and water is very important. The amount of time you cook is very important. So, you put the rice initially, it measures your quantity of rice, takes the water, automatically cooks it. Just put raw rice.
01:08:03
Speaker
Just put raw rice, the machine will automatically take the water, it would cook the rice to 60% first, right? And then it beeps, then you add your meat, you do the layering or whatever it is, you meat or veggies and all, then you press OK, then the dumbing process starts.
01:08:24
Speaker
If you know the typical way of making biryani, it's on coal and coal on bottom and coal on all the sides. It's a five dimensional cooking. One, two, three, four, and on the bottom. So we designed our machine as a double layered cooking. So heat is just not on the bottom. It's across the surface, fluid heating and dry heat. So it does the dry heat. At the end, if you see Rico, there is a small extension that does the dumb.
01:08:53
Speaker
Right. So, then you have... What is the... Like you... So, dumb is basically... You press it down and... No, no, no. It's basically giving some charcoal flavor. Okay. So, there is a container where you can put some charcoal and it sort of dumps it. So, basically what dumb is, it creates an environment and it needs to be closed. Vacuum sealed, heat should not escape.
01:09:21
Speaker
At a low temperature, it cooks for 20-30 minutes. So what happens is if a rice is like this, it stands up because of the slow heat and that whole flavor transfer happens. When you smell the biryani, that's the dumb you are smelling. That happens in riko.
01:09:42
Speaker
So, initial biryani machine we built, which automated. Rice would come automatically, the layering was automatic, there was a robotic arm, there was a stirrer that comes and stirs and all. It was a 15 lakh rupee machine and nobody bought it. Now, the biryani machine we have called Ricoh, it's just 75,000 rupees and everybody is in love with it. Wow!
01:10:06
Speaker
Which again is the philosophy of a cobot rather than a robot. Amazing.
Sales Philosophies and Market Focus
01:10:16
Speaker
How did you learn to sell? How did I learn to sell? You were needing sales yourself, right? Yeah, I still need it.
01:10:31
Speaker
I think the main thing about selling right is you should not sell. I think the important thing is you need to be a solution provider and not a salesperson.
01:10:48
Speaker
Philosophy says that you need to be so good, you need to be pleasing, your tonality, this, that and all. I would say that's all rubbish. Make a product which a customer likes or wants and you position it, people will buy it. You will need to do extraordinary sales activity if you have something stupid to sell, which people don't want.
01:11:09
Speaker
And this is something which I always tell my R&D team. Every R&D guy has an idea. Then I tell him and this is an example which I give almost everybody in the company.
01:11:24
Speaker
So, let me ask you that Akshay. Say you wanted to do this podcast today morning and there was a sales guy coming and sending you a head pain medicine. Would you buy it? Before the podcast somebody said, Akshay buy this head pain medicine. Would you buy it? You mostly know. Put the phone down. He says, sir, 90-50% discount.
01:11:48
Speaker
Buy one, get one, Diwali offer. But say you have a head pain and there's a guy calling you, sir, I have a head pain medicine delivered to you in five minutes, do you want it? What would you say? Yeah, because you need it at that time. You need it. But, sir, 50% extra because Diwali, I have to work. You'd still want it.
01:12:16
Speaker
Now, is it the sales skill or is it he bringing you a product that you want? And that's the beauty of sales. Sales is not about selling something which people don't want. Sales is about trying and understanding that, hey, do you really have a problem? And if you have a problem, I have a solution for you. If I don't have a solution for you, then I'm wasting your time, my time and the organization's time.
01:12:47
Speaker
And each and every person, like we are... Sales is more about discovering the problem, basically. Marrying a problem with a solution. If you don't have a solution, you don't have a sale.
01:13:01
Speaker
And we have 50 people in sales in Mukunda today. And the first thing we do when we speak to a customer is saying that, hey, do you have a problem? Do you need something? Is there a scalar problem? Is there a consistency problem? Is there an attrition problem? Then I have a solution for you. Otherwise, I'm not there.
01:13:24
Speaker
So basically, depending on your understanding of the problem, you are able to tailor a solution and say, okay, these two products will solve your problem. Correct, correct. Okay, okay, interesting. It's not calling and saying, sir, Meripas Pachas product, ABCD and all. It's about first understanding the customer and then pitching. So this is like a product, let's say, right?
01:13:51
Speaker
Want to understand problems, create products, invest in R&D to create products that solve those problems and those products will sell automatically because you are solving problems which are not solved so far. Exactly. And trust me, you know, everybody says, only US is the market.
01:14:11
Speaker
But yeah, we have 10,000 restaurants in India whom we have automated. If you build a product for India, keeping that Indian customer in mind, expensive. I'll tell you, a normal fryer in the market costs 5,000. My product costs 35,000 rupees, seven times expensive. And every outlet needs four fryers, two fryers. So one wage, one non-wage. Somebody with me has to invest 70,000 rupees.
01:14:38
Speaker
If you buy a local fry, you have to do 10,000. So why will somebody pay 60,000 rupees more? Technically, no. But with us, they are because you are solving a problem. Right? When you solve a right problem, it's not about which country. India is a large enough market. If you know what you're solving for, giving that value. And I think that's the reason why in India we are doing so well.
01:15:03
Speaker
90% of my revenue comes from standalone customers. People feel only the BC funded or buy my machine. It's no, it's the Lalaji, the ODP, it's the guy on the street who is buying my machines today. Right. So I am the bakeries in Bangalore who are very happy to buy my machine. It's the, you know, which city are from Akshay? I think I could name some.
01:15:32
Speaker
In Delhi, okay, there's a lot of, I'll tell you, there's one, it's so given, but it's the small, small outlets, of course, they all are my customers, but 90% of the market is not the brands, it's the standalones.
01:15:52
Speaker
Daily, there's one customer who's brand name is called Subse Sastakhaana. His brand is called Subse Sastakhaana. It's not a brand, it's an outlet. It's just out of nowhere. And this is a story, right? Like, real story. My sales guy went there for a pitch because he had got a call. He went to the outlet and sent me a photo. It looked like a little Dunji place. He said, sir, you have to pay $1,000. You have to pay $1,000.
01:16:21
Speaker
That guy went and he came back saying he wants to buy five or six of our machines. And this wasn't just out of COVID 2021. And we were also excited. And trust me, that guy went from one, two, three, four outlets.
01:16:40
Speaker
He sells 50 rupee, Khadi Chawal, that whole Thali ride. So, he bought a Rico, like the office lunch thing and also in a normal 50 rupee, 60 rupee kind of a lower kind of a price point. And then they realized, hey, wow, that's where we are able to create an impact. And he didn't mind spending 40, 50,000 rupees on the Friar and 75,000 rupee on the Rico and all that because he saw real value out of it.
01:17:11
Speaker
It's very easy to come and say, Dariya Ganji in Delhi uses my machine. Burkhos uses my machine. Haldiram, Bikanerwala. It's PMF first, but market is 90%. The belly of the market in India is the value customer, right? The Momo, that Dolma Aunty Momo you might have heard, right? Who was on Shark Tank also. She uses our machines to fry our Momos, to steam our Momos. Yeah.
01:17:41
Speaker
Wow. Amazing. Amazing. What kind of revenue do you do? Like what this year, how much revenue will you do? Yeah, we should be a 50 crore run rate company. Amazing. Like this year you'll end at 50. And this is all domestic sales? 95%, I would say. We still do export, but it's 5%. It's not very focused, a lot of inbound that people call and say, then we ship it.
01:18:09
Speaker
And this would be like Indian restaurants or Indian entrepreneurs outside who? Mostly, yes. But do you have like an export? Because, you know, if you want to go from 50 crores to 500 crores, I'm guessing a large part of that revenue would be exports.
01:18:28
Speaker
Actually, no. That's what I thought for a long while. Let's look at data. Let's look at Zomato data. Zomato says that, quarterly, about 25,000 new restaurants are added on the platform. These are not brands. These are 25,000 locations that get added. That's about a lakh of restaurants a year. Each restaurant's capex is about 10 to 15 lakh.
01:18:55
Speaker
right. It's a 15,000 crore market today of new restaurants coming 15,000 crore. Yes. Right. Maybe in that
01:19:07
Speaker
And that's just on the Zomato. There are many catterers coming, many QSRs that are not on Zomato, many things in IT parks, many canteens, which are not there on Zomato. Many of those things are there, hospitals and all. A lot of players. The market is huge. A 15,000 crore of capex is coming. That's $2 billion.
01:19:29
Speaker
If the time is $2 billion, why should I go outside of India? Just think about it. And we have just barely scratched the surface. I have a sandwich maker. Every nook and corner, people eat sandwiches. My sandwich maker is amazing. The Mapros of the world, Truffles in Bangalore, they all use my machines.
01:19:47
Speaker
I am very very curious about form factors having worked in QSR for a while. So, we ensure that the machine does not look alien to you. Think about you as an operator, right? You are used to a sandwich maker. You will not use it. Unless and until adoption at the outlet is there, I will not be able to sell. Okay. We went to the customer and said sandwich maker problem.
01:20:17
Speaker
Right. They said, you know, we make, we put sauce, cheese and make the bread. That's not a challenge. Grilling the sandwich is a challenge. Because once you put, the guy goes, openski, hua, nehua, ari zada, oh yeah. But I can't throw it. Let me give it to customer. Customer zada chilare is shouting lots. So let me take it out faster.
01:20:37
Speaker
So what we did, we created like the griller example I told you, right? The same thing, once you put four jumbo sandwiches, it presses okay, it comes, cooks it, it has a pressure sensor because sometimes you put more tomatoes, onions and all, which might be bigger. So it senses okay, this is a club sandwich, the pressure has to be different, cooks it. The moment you see a sandwich, it will smile at you. The grill months are so even.
01:21:03
Speaker
It's cooked exactly, it's not black, it's not golden. It's between that golden and black. And when you crunch it, bahar is crunchy here, you will feel the grooves actually in our sandwich. And that's what you have solved for and that's what industry wants. Like buttons etc, like on the top for more glow, like for the coloring. Before putting the sandwich.
01:21:27
Speaker
we had automated, but then we realized if I can remove that and save 20,000 rupee of cost, my adoption can be higher. So we had two models, a sandwich maker at 80,000, which does automatic buttering, a sandwich maker at 45,000, which does not do automatic buttering.
Investment and Growth Trajectory
01:21:44
Speaker
People all opted for the 45,000. One gram extra butter doesn't make sense. But grilling it makes a huge impact in a customer's life.
01:22:00
Speaker
So, you have also raised more capital since that Indian angel one Karol, tell me about your fundraising.
01:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, so after Indian Engine Network came in, we had Rakesh Malhotra, who was on the podcast previously, who is the owner of SAR group. So he was part of the Indian Engine Network. And out of all the investors I had, it was he and Mr. Munjal who had some kind of hardware experience.
01:22:33
Speaker
So I used to go to them for some kind of brainstorming. So he really liked what we were doing. That was we just had the dosamatic done. He really liked our frugal engineering and doing it fast and all that stuff. And he came in at I think 2018 or something. He came into a cap table and he also gave the Indian engine networks an exit.
01:23:00
Speaker
Right. So he gave them a decent enough exit and he brought in more capital for us to grow our sales and marketing. And we wanted a factory, we wanted our service network to be better. So he came in then. And during COVID, when all the restaurants were really not doing well, we called him up and said that, hey, you know, it's COVID and we need some more capital. It was just a call and he was like, fine, I'm willing to put in more capital into the company because you're your partner.
01:23:30
Speaker
And that's when we did the second round with his family office in Qubit capital. Then last year, Zomato came in. So, because Zomato's philosophy was to help restaurants grow fast, they had the ecosystem kind of a philosophy that if you're able to make ecosystem faster, quality supply helps you build more
01:23:59
Speaker
demand. So India was not a India even today not a supply demand constrained market. It's a supply constrained market if you're able to really grow your supply, better your demand sort of increases.
01:24:10
Speaker
So, I think it has worked out well. I think with the Zomato funding, what really happened was we could really go and take a lot of bets on outbound sales. Today, we are a 45-50 SKU company, right? We were just 5-6 machines now, 50-55 machines. We could invest a lot of capital in R&D, world-class production. So, we have India's probably the largest kitchen tech factory.
01:24:38
Speaker
It just looks like a global factory, like 30,000 square feet facility, country wide service network, some of the best tech teams probably in the world for kitchen robotics and very good sales. Where is your factory? It's in Bangalore, it's very close to HSR layout.
01:25:03
Speaker
Okay, amazing. What is the service team troubleshooting if something goes wrong? So, we do something called predictive maintenance. So, what it means is,
01:25:21
Speaker
There are two kinds of maintenance. See, it's a machine. It will fail at some point of time. What you need to do is prevent it from failing. So what you do to your car, every six months, nine months, you go. He checks everything, services, and gives you back. But a better way to do it is called predictive fail servicing. So all our machines are connected. We keep getting data through our cloud.
01:25:48
Speaker
So failure, what happens is it doesn't fail at once. There's a small bug that leads to a bigger thing, bigger thing. It's a series of events which leads to a depth of a machine and then that's when you go and service it.
01:26:01
Speaker
What we did is we went and what we figured out was let's understand the initial failure of the machine. Before the machine fails, let's go and... during the first bug itself, we go and capture the failure, go and service or repair the machine to prevent it from failing. That's what we call predictive maintenance.
01:26:26
Speaker
And is this a revenue stream for you? Like do you charge extra for service or how does that work? So the first year servicing is free. Right. And everybody says that, hey, you should be making big money from AMC, AMC contracts. Unfortunately, no, because customer will have to pay an AMC.
01:26:49
Speaker
So people don't buy AMC's because they have so much confidence. It's like your refrigerator. So it's not a revenue line, but fortunately, because the machines are so good, customers tend to invest more with us for newer
Building Trust and Hardware Challenges
01:27:09
Speaker
technology. Somebody who is doing burgers wants to do fried chicken tomorrow. We are the first port of call. Hey, do you have something about fried chicken?
01:27:17
Speaker
We give them a fried chicken solution. They're going to the new outlet. They come back to us. So in the last one year, what has happened is a customer, a kitchen who used to spend one and a half lakh rupee with us spends four to five lakh rupee with us now. So the average order value for every kitchen has kept increasing because they have so much more confidence on the product.
01:27:40
Speaker
And I say that that's a bigger revenue driver than going and selling typical AMC's to a customer. Ideally, you should not sell AMC. That means you are telling that my product is wrong. So like first year is free. After that, what happens? Do they buy an AMC or you charge per visit?
01:27:59
Speaker
So, first year it's free, second year onwards, if there is a failure, there is a cost or what happens is we ship out a service person to say that, I am changing it and there is a small cost attached to it. But in principle, the machine is designed for a five, seven year life. So, enough testing and all those things happen to ensure that it's done.
01:28:26
Speaker
The product also internally, we have devised a lot of metrics. Product has ratings ranging from 1 to 10. If a product is rated 10, that means we internally are certifying that das saalya product kharam niyoga. And we don't ship a product with unless and until it reaches a particular threshold. And before that, we ship it to customers. See, we are a very big innovation engine at the company.
01:28:53
Speaker
We work, we know pinpoint of a customer and initially the machines will fail, might not give the right output because it's in the very early. And we have a lot of customers who work with us very early on in the innovation cycle. I go to a customer and say, I'm sure it will fail every week. And this is a conversation I have. Do you want to try it? Do you want to buy it?
01:29:17
Speaker
And I have a set of customers who invest with us at that early stage. There's like, ha ha, definitely.
01:29:24
Speaker
very well knowing that every week there is going to be a failure because they want to be part of that initial journey. And I know customers who have started with me that everyday failure, everyday my service engineer is going and today the machine doesn't fail for years together. And they feel that pride, you know, I was part of the journey of you. And that ensures that our R&D lab to market is extremely fast.
01:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, because you're not testing in isolation. You're testing in production environment, basically. Correct, correct. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Basically, you're learning in college of that stall when you told your principal that I will pay later from the revenue I make. That learning has continued till today in terms of how you invest in new product development. Yeah, yeah. We are quite frugal, but yeah, it's expensive. R&D is expensive is what I keep saying.
01:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, amazing. So my last question to you, what's your advice to founders who are trying to build like, you know, you're building a hardware technology business, what are some of the learnings that you have had over the years of building such a business that you'd like to share? So I would say building a startup is a marathon, right? It's not a sprint. But building a hardware led company is a double marathon.
01:30:52
Speaker
Matlab, it's going to be double that difficult if you are building in hardware. But the benefit is once you're able to build it, it's so much more difficult for anybody else to copy it that you will reap the benefits for a very, very long time. Because if you had to spend, it's people come and say, yeah, banal ya to copy the wage.
01:31:13
Speaker
Trust me, it's not easy. I have 10,000s of machines out there in the field. Till now, nobody could copy my dosamatic. People have tried it. There are people who have dosamatics, but it's not easy. Unless and until they go through that grind and going through two to three years of really tough time, they will not be able to copy it. But by the time they copy it, you should be so good that you have your version two, version three, version four out there in the market.
01:31:42
Speaker
I think there's a lot of SaaS companies that have come out of India globally very well reputed, but there are not many hardware tech companies. I'm not saying hardware, only hardware plus tech companies that have come. Few companies like Ether, Ola, they've done like real superb job, global first companies and all.
01:32:01
Speaker
And I think there is a huge opportunity to do that in consumer electronics, appliances, automobile, I think. And India has huge talent. So many engineering colleges out there, right? So you will get better quality people at a better price globally. And with that whole naked India push, I think there's a lot of value to be reaped here if you are in this space. It is going to be extremely tough. But yeah, if you're able to crack it, then you will make tons of money.
01:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is the decade for hardware tech startups. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Are you competing with Indian companies or global companies? Like if a restaurant wants to buy a kitchen automation, who are the options for him besides you?
01:32:51
Speaker
I think there are some emerging companies in India as well as globally who are trying to do kitchen automation. But everybody's about five, seven years behind us. So everybody has a catching up right now.
01:33:05
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.