Foodtech startup Daalchini Technologies is making great strides in the field of intelligent retail by offering automated kiosks, mobility-retail, and smart vending machines in India. The company has successfully placed IoT-enabled vending machines at various sites such as educational institutions, offices, hospitals, and railway stations to provide people with access to fresh healthy meals. “Our vending machines are installed at Reliance, Aditya Birla Group’s Hindalco Plant, the manufacturing units of Samsung, Paytm, government organisations like Niti Aayog, and many startups,” says the company co-founder & CEO, Prerna Kalra.
Necessity is the mother of all inventions. “The idea of Daalchini originated from my personal experience,” Kalra reveals. “While working a full-time job and packed schedule, I could hardly cook, even though I craved fresh, home-cooked meals. After a while, food delivery became unsustainable too. While on a work trip to China, I saw these vending machines dispensing almost all fresh food items. That’s when I thought that if vending machine-based retail is popular in China, India, too, had the potential for this concept.”
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Inspired by the idea, Kalra and her co-worker from Paytm, Vidya Bhushan, founded Daalchini in August 2017, developed the product, and started operations in January 2018. “We offer people affordable snacks and home-cooked food via our IoT-enabled vending machines. We help customers save Rs 40 on delivery charges and 40 minutes of delivery time. Daalchini is the most cost-effective delivery option for customers, especially in Rs 99 categories,” she points out.
Daalchini has witnessed several milestones in its journey. “We started with two vending machines in 2018, and the number reached 50 in FY 2019. By the end of FY 2020, we had 200. Considering the need for social distancing, we deployed our machines in several hospitals in Delhi,” informs Kalra.
“By 2021’s Q4, we had 310 kiosks. Currently, there are over 1,000 vending machines across 25+ cities in India. Over 90% of the machines are Ebitda positive within 45 days of installing them,” says Kalra. “While we started as a bootstrapped company, in September 2022, Daalchini raised $4 million in the last series A round, led by an Indian venture capital firm Unicorn India Ventures”. Kalra aims to grow Daalchini from 1,000+ to over 5,000 smart and autonomous retail points in the next 12 to 18 months. “We intend to clock Rs 50 crore in revenues with a GMV of Rs 130 crore in the next year.”
Remotely monitors food waste
Technology-led innovations have been the cornerstone of the food tech startup’s success story. By leveraging autonomous retail technology, Daalchini provides perishable and non-perishable items to customers through its tech suite, which includes IoT retail. “This allows us to remotely monitor the food and ensure it remains safe and healthy,” says Kalra.
The company’s tech-driven and temperature-controlled supply chain is not demand-driven but forecast-driven, led by machine learning (ML)-based insights on sales, customer behaviour, and peak sales times. “We built Daalchini to enable brands and retailers to instantly deliver under Rs 99 food at zero delivery cost via autonomous retail outlets. We gather data that helps us restock items that have been sold. To reduce food waste, we use Daalchini’s ML-based tool, OFT, which predicts the next order based on sales and consumption patterns,” she adds.
THINK AHEAD
* Daalchini kiosks offer home-cooked food
* Has over 1,000 vending machines across 25+ cities
* ML-based insights help reduce food waste
* Company raised $4 million in the last series A round in September 2022
* Plans 5,000 smart and autonomous retail points in the next 12 to 18 months