Top 11 Food Startups in India

Food has successfully paved its way as the favourite luxury in every family,  emerging as an ample opportunity for a lot of businesses to grow. Skipping the long queues to get tasty food and walking out of the house to a store has become outdated concepts. 

 

Gone are the days of not having ample options to choose, currently it's an era of the plethora of options to choose from in every variety that too available in various locations as well as ready to be delivered at our doorsteps safely. 

 

There are a lot of startups budding and flourishing in the market with the sole intent of bringing to the users something that they may not have tried before at a very generous amount in each case. 

 

There are all kinds of ventures available ranging from junk food to Indian foods to fitness foods making the customers aware of their presence and their significance and at the same time finding their share in the food tech industry of India which is growing exponentially every year. 

 

Recommended Blog:  How is technology revolutionizing the food industry 

 

Here is a list of the top 12 Indian Food Startups which has taken the food industry by storm and are generating good revenue. 

 

Top Food Startups in India

Listed below are some of the leading food startups in India. 

1. Zomato 

 

Zomato is a leading food tech company which basically has the option of listing several restaurants on its portal from where the users can pick their order and get it Delivered at their doorsteps. 

This venture which currently operates in 1000+ Cities across India and has gone to operate Internationally as well, began as a company called Foodiebay in 2010. The founders of this idea were Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah came up with this idea after having realized the problem of long queues to be able to order and pick one’s favourite food. 

 

Hence in 2010 they changed the company’s name to Zomato and made it operate across India aligning with the interest of the users. Since then there was looking back and this startup became the unicorn startup, which is one of its kind in Food Tech. 

 

2. Swiggy 

 

Swiggy is also a food delivering service, just like Zomato and a tough competitor of the same as well. This bangalore based food delivery company was started by Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety alumni of the BITS Pilani. 

 

This was founded in 2014 and has managed to climb up the ladder of success due to its no minimum order policy and listing of more than 10 thousand restaurants on its portal throughout the country. This company is currently taking up 35-40% of the market share of food startups which has evolved. 

 

It was in 2017 that this company came out with an initiative called Swiggy Access which has not been implemented lately but the idea was to call for restaurant owners to open and operate neighbourhood kitchens via the application. 

 

3. Faasos 

 

Faasos started as a Kolkata roll store chain in Pune in 2004. It is currently delivering throughout India with its main presence in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata etc. The founders Jaydeep Burman and Kallol Banerjee came up with this idea because they wanted to introduce something Indian in the market where the burgers and the pizzas were everywhere. 

Faasos operates as a cloud kitchen based business model which is different from other food tech businesses operating but yet is facing tough competition in the market. This currently operates in 160 plus kitchens and is reliant upon the out of the box hiring of its employees. 

This company held a revenue for Rs. 305 Crore in 2019. 

 

 

4. Biryani by Kilo 

 

Biryani by Kilo serves biryani in Handis (earthen pots), making it the most fascinating food delivery chain available serving Biryani. They offer Hyderabadi, Lucknowi and Kolkata biryanis operating primarily under cloud based kitchen systems. 

This idea was propounded by Kaushik Roy, Vishal Jindal, and Ritesh Sinha in 2015 in Noida. This focuses on challenging the popular foods items which are prevalent almost everywhere and in every store and shop. 

 

This venture came to become a bit hit for the biryani lovers out there. This currently prepares more than 1000 orders a day and gets it delivered to the homes. There are also dine-in facilities available at some of the outlets as well including in Delhi NCR. 

 

5. FreshMenu 

 

FreshMenu is a food delivery service which is based on an innovation based system and as a part of this operates on changing the menu everyday which is also the main reason behind keeping the customers engaged without them being bored. 

 

This 2014 founded company currently operates in 4 Cities mainly Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore and Mumbai. This primarily focuses on delivering the food within 45 minutes to their customers as they wish to focus on keeping it fresh and another reason behind this is they hold the 99% of their deliveries on their own from their hyperlocal kitchens. 

 

The founder Rashmi Daga believes that she focused on visiting a different restaurant like experience each day. 

 

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Leading Indian food startups

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6. InnerChef 

 

Innerchef was started by Rajesh Sawhney, Sanjeev Singhal, and Bal DiGhent at Haryana in 2015. This venture was started to connect working youngsters with a healthy meal. 

 

They currently serve in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Gurgaon with a model where there are a lot of kitchens involved in the food preparation and then are overlooked and monitored by a strict and central tasting and delivery process where everything needs to be under the regulatory benchmark. 

 

This is the reason due to the success of the startup where they have been delivering more than a 1000 orders each day making it compete with other leading brands like Box8 and TinMen.

 

They have an expanded menu taken care of by the chefs which offers a variety of cuisines including Indian, Asian, European, and Mediterranean, and is rooted in India totally.

Recommended Blog: Role of Big Data in Food Industry 

 

7. Falafel Factory 

 

Falafel Factory is a food delivering venture by 2 IIT Kharagpur Chirag Thaker and Akansha Prasad. This Bangalore based startup was founded in 2013 and has been growing at a rapid pace since then. 

 

The idea through this startup is to bring the middle eastern cuisine to India which is rare to find like Falafels itself, this is a deep-fried ball or patty-shaped fritter made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both. They are currently operating through both brick and mortar outlets and delivering to homes both with plans of expansion in Mumbai, Delhi and Pune. 

 

“We pride ourselves on being able to serve our customers with the most delicious and authentic falafels and pita pockets in the town”, say Chirag and Akanksha about their business. 

 

8. EatonGo 

 

EatonGo is a startup which came up with the idea of saving people from missing out on healthy breakfast which is kind of becoming a normal trend for the working people. 

 

This idea was founded and executed by Udit Saran and Taru Raj Agrawal. This 2015 Founded startup initially began as a collaboration of 8 people and currently serves as a community of more than 30 people. 

 

This venture has also successfully grown from taking 100-150 orders per week to delivering 2500 orders per week and more than 60% of their customer base is repetitive and is of the same age group they expected it to be of. This company has also been recently acquired by Innerchef. 

 

 

9. SpoonJoy 

 

SpoonJoy is yet another food and beverage company focusing on making  Healthy Food affordable & accessible to everyone. This was founded by Manish Jethan in 2013. 

 

The company offers a subscription-based online platform that allows office goers and other consumers to order meal packs such as set cut-fruit packs delivered in their respective offices easily and quickly to be able to combat the issue of office goers skipping on their meals and not having enough varieties to munch on. 

The fun fact about this company is that it has been literally backed by Flipkart. 

 

10. Dineout 

 

DineOut is one of the most famous and leading restaurant table booking applications which has taken the industry by storm. Due to its heavy discounts and offers which are always available on one or the other restaurant, this is being liked by everyone and is accessible with listings of almost all the major restaurants throughout the city. 

 

Ankit Mehrotra, Vivek Kapoor, Sahil Jain, and Nikhil Bakshi founded this company in 2012, this is a Noida based company that went on air with listing 75 of New Delhi's restaurants and also deals with leading restaurants in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore currently. 

 

This is both a B2C and a B2B model connecting the consumers to the restaurants. 

 

11.Tandurust

 

Tandurust is a food delivery platform which focuses on nutrition and calorie count and primarily targets the fitness enthusiastic audience. This 2014 founded business was an idea of Pushpesh Dutt and Sudhanshu Sharma, who believe in the significance of living healthy and eating healthy. 

 

This Bangalore based company works on a subscription based model where there is an option to subscribe to to weekly or monthly meal (breakfast, lunch and snacks) plans based on the goals and the preference of buyer which contains staples like Oats upma, baked mix-veg paratha, peas sandwich, broccoli salad are some of the dishes on the menu ranging from 150-300 INR. 

 

 

Conclusion 

 

Food Industry in India is growing at a rapid pace and there are a lot of such startups which are adding to the growth rate of this list each and every day. Each startup is based upon a backed idea and a pattern of their own and focuses on the delivery and serving of the best kind of service to their customers and users.