A short story about Momscurry

At the onset, we had these questions staring at us:

·        How can we simplify the accessibility of healthy food?

·        Can we truly introduce tech in online food delivery?

Looking back, the food delivery landscape has changed significantly in the last 18 months. There has been no dearth of convenient online food delivery options in Bangalore. All major world cuisines and even regional cuisines are now available on tap. The last delivery time has been pushed well beyond 11 pm. Bangalore is slowly becoming a city that consumes food round the clock. Food delivery companies have started giving "late night" discount, fueling the nocturnal online food delivery business.

While a lot of importance has been given to convenience, the nutritional aspect of food has been largely ignored. "You are what you eat". The human body requires calories and nutrition and both are equally important. In 2017, FSSAI, India's food regulator started asking restaurants to declare the calorific and nutritive value. FSSAI has also constituted a scientific panel on Food Fortification and Nutrition as part of their effort to address the nutritional gap in the Indian population.

When we did our research, we found that there are well documented and identified nutritional gaps in the Indian diet. The most prevalent ones are in the form of vitamin B12, fiber and other micro-nutrients. Addressing the nutritional problem and providing healthy food has been the singular purpose of Momscurry from day 1.

We spoke to nutritionists and came up with an idea of addressing nutritional deficiencies by introducing Functional food or Superfood in our combos. Superfoods deliver large doses of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and which are likely to reduce the risk of chronic diseases. We hoped that customers would subscribe in dozens but we missed a critical point. Consuming food is as much a psychological process as it is physiological process. The food must taste good, veggies must have no oil and bitter gourd must taste sweet!

So, we put tremendous emphasis on delivering healthy food by keeping it home styled, using fine ingredients, preparing it fresh and disregarding artificial additives. Subscriptions poured in and some of our existing customers are day 1 customers while others re-subscribe when their wives are on summer vacation!

Having said that, subscription based food delivery is a challenging business. For starters (pun intended), whether it rains or snows, the food should taste great and must be delivered on time, day after day. Taste fatigue is a perennial problem and it keeps the churn rate high.

It has been a wonderful 12 months journey in pursuit of "making healthy food accessible" to all in Bangalore. In these 12 months, we pivoted twice and did numerous experiments. The most prominent pivot was to turn into a full stack healthy food delivery company.

At Momscurry, this is just the beginning. We want to utilize machine learning to provide balanced meals for general well-being and to discover naturally occurring molecules with super healthy properties. This is our small but a pro-active step in helping people eat and stay healthy. For you, it means eating right every day, keeping fit and going.

Nishant Chandra

www.momscurry.com