​An ex-Housing.com employee is now serving a gastronomical treat to India

Indians are experiencing entrepreneurial revolution in the country. With funds and support coming from all corners of the globe, and Tatas and Ambanis showing interest in startups, one can easily say that Indian entrepreneurs are having a gala time.

So when we met Prateek Agarwal, founder, BiteClub.in, who left his high-profile job with Housing.com to pursue his dream of opening up an exclusive ‘restaurant in the cloud’, we weren’t surprised. What amazed us was the concept—we all have imagined owning a home in the cloud at some point of our life, but the thought of owning a kitchen (or in this case a restaurant) never crossed our minds. However, what inspired Prateek to open a ‘restaurant in the cloud’ i.e. a virtual restaurant was his passion for good and healthy food; something that he missed the most while living alone in Mumbai. And when Prateek, along with his friends, Aushim Krishan and Siddharth Sharma pulled in passionate chefs from various fields on a revenue sharing agreement, Bite Club was born.

Bite Club: It’s different?
Carrying certain traits of both a restaurant and a Tiffin service, Bite Club is not conventionally just another food service platform. Instead, it is a technology and logistics platform that sources its food from various home chefs and professional chefs, and then delivers it directly to the consumers. The good things about this platform are: a wide variety of cuisines, daily changing menu and a native app across all platforms- Android, iOS and Web that helps customer order a guilt-free hearty meal in just three taps. The bad thing is: we didn’t really get the chance to taste its offerings so can’t really say how good the food is, but their idea is certainly delicious!

Tasting the power of crowdsourcing
Prateek’s first success came with a seed funding of $250,000 (Rs 1.5 crore) from Powai Lake Ventures and a few other investors. They could have set up a physical restaurant, but this IIT alumnus decided to leverage the power of crowdsourcing because: one, he wanted good food to reach all and not only selected few; two, he wanted people to know a bit about the chef who would be preparing a meal or them; and three, it also open room for more innovations and variety.

So, how Bite Club really does all this: It has built a community of 100+ chefs spanning home chefs, recipe bloggers, ex- restaurateurs, professional chefs who are all taking their cuisine to a large number of people via Bite Club’s platform. Marketing, order management, packaging and delivery for the chef are Bite Club’s responsibility.

Good food no longer a luxury
A majority of times, people in metro cities end up spending exorbitant amounts for the food they consume, which is mostly unhealthy with no guarantee of freshness or novelty. Bite Club aims to address this problem by giving them a choice to the get delectable and appetizing food made with fresh produce. And for those, who miss home-cooked meal prepared by their moms as they struggle for a living in an unknown city, there are 80+ women partner chefs on the Bite Club platform. Most of these women are housewives who the company claims make more than Rs 80,000/month through them. We don’t know how valid their claim is, but even if women are earning half of this amount per month, then surely Prateek is also giving wings to other entrepreneurs in the country. And this, we believe, is not a bad beginning at all!
(Image: Bite Club)