Building tech stack over 10 yrs helped transform food industry: Ankush Grover, Rebel Foods
Grover, Co-Founder of Rebel Foods, was speaking at a special session at the e4m TechManch 2023
“Digitalisation and technology have transformed large businesses for over the last 20 years,” said Ankush Grover, co-founder, of Rebel Foods at a special session at the e4m TechManch 2023.
Till now, food is a sector that has not been transformed the way the rest of the industries have. “If you look at the number of restaurants per thousand with more than 500 outlets, India has only two. If you go to the US or China, it is much higher,” Grover shared about current challenges in India in terms of the traditional way of food distribution.
He elucidated, “Over the last five to seven years, there are certain things we have been working on like penetration of internet users, behavioural changes on millennials and GenZs, convenience and digital authenticity. So, it is obvious today that if you order, you first go and see what people are talking about.”
Moving further in conversation, Grover stated, “By 2011, we were on 50 locations in Bombay and Pune. The first light bulb movement which happened in 2015 when we asked our customers about ever seeing our outlets. 76 per cent of them said they never saw anything. So, that was the time we decided there is no point in spending so much capital on taking locations. 2015 was when we started our first cloud kitchen in Gurgaon. Today, we have around 350 cloud kitchens across India and around 75 outside the country.”
Talking about increasing customer touchpoints, Grover commented, “Omni channel is another approach which we wanted to touch. We opened our first digital food court in Pune Law College Road where you can walk in and order. A lot of them will come further next year.”
“This is our way of transforming the food industry which is 200 years old, still working the same way. So, all the light bulb movements and building this tech stack over the last 10 years has enabled us to do this,” he added.
Concluding the session, Grover conveyed, “For food, reliability matters the most. With the help of AI, we developed a SWAT (size, weight, appearance and temperature) machine and if the ordered food passes everything, then it will be out for delivery otherwise it will be rejected.”
