The need to launch iTiffin, an online tiffin service was realised when Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa approached the former vice president of Flipkart and the CEO of iTiffin Tapan Das and his associate Ryan Fernando, to help him maintain a healthy diet. Their tips helped the cricketer improve his health and inspired the duo to come up with something more than just rendering advices. Impressed by their concept of providing tasty, nutritious and calorie defined meals, Robin Uthappa also decided to be a part of this venture by putting in a seed investment of R1.5 crore and hence they launched iTiffin in 2013.
“Increasing number of lifestyle diseases in cities has prompted us to take this step. The main idea behind launching iTiffin was to make people aware about the consequences of eating junk food and provide them with food which is healthy and tasty. Our meals help people fight lifestyle disorders,” says Tapan Das.
Initially when they started off they used to get only 100 orders per month but within a year they served more than one lakh meals. Now they have around 10,000 loyal customers in Bengaluru and they supply 2,000 meals a day. They follow a subscription oriented model which ranges from R500-3,000. Their team consists of dieticians and doctors who work towards guiding the chefs to prepare wellness inducing and nutrient driven meals. As of now their menu includes Indian and Continental cuisines and the menu changes on a weekly basis.
“We are the pioneer in this vertical, I don’t think there is anyone out there to compete with us as we take care of everything by ourselves including customer acquisition, food preparation and delivery and this definitely gives us an edge over the others,” says Tapan Das.
The Bengaluru-based startup is planning to raise R62.3 crore by July to invest towards a pan-India expansion. Currently, iTiffin’s services are limited to Bengaluru but by July-end they will start their operations in Delhi as well.
Apart from subscription plans, they have also launched Munchboxes which contains healthy protein bars, biscuits and tea bags. According to Das, Munchboxes was launched to serve as a healthy substitute whenever there is a craving for junk food between the meals. They are also planning to launch a series of wellness products this year which includes heart friendly atta.“We launched i-Atta earlier this year, which is a special atta for diabetic patients. We are working towards other heart friendly products as well and products that will also help people tackle the issue of obesity,” says Tapan Das.
When asked about challenges, Das shared that retaining the customers for a longer period of time is the biggest challenge that he is facing right now. He loses around 2% of his customers everyday due to delayed delivery. This has prompted them to focus more towards improving their back-end operations than on technology up gradation, though they will be focusing on improving their current app by making it more user friendly.