Cloud cooking land: Indian housewives become gig economy chefs

AFP

Rashmi Sahijwala never expected to start working at the age of 59, let alone join India’s gig economy — now she is part of an army of housewives turning their homes into “cloud kitchens” to feed time-starved millennials.

Asia’s third-largest economy is battling a slowdown so sharp and it is creating a drag on global growth, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, but there are some bright spots.

The gig economy, aided by cheap mobile data and abundant labor, has flourished in India, opening up new markets across the vast nation.

Although Indian women have long battled for access to education and employment opportunities, the biggest hurdle for many is convincing conservative families to let them leave home.

But new apps like Curryful, Homefoodi, and Nanighar are tapping the skills of housewives to slice, dice and prepare meals for hungry urbanites from the comfort of their homes.

The so-called cloud kitchens — restaurants that have no physical presence and a delivery-only model — are rising in popularity as there is a boom in food delivery apps such as Swiggy and Zomato.

“We want to be the Uber of home-cooked food,” said Ben Mathew, who launched Curryful in 2018, convinced that housewives were a huge untapped resource.

His company — which employs five people for the app’s daily operations — works with 52 women and three men, and the 31-year-old web entrepreneur hopes to get 1 million female chefs on-board by 2022.

“We usually train them in processes of sanitization, cooking, prep time and packaging ... and then launch them on the platform,” Mathew said.

One of the first housewives to join Curryful in November 2018 shortly after its launch, Sahijwala was initially apprehensive, despite having four decades of experience in the kitchen.

But backed by her children, including her son who gave her regular feedback about her proposed dishes, she took the plunge.

Since then, she’s undergone a crash course in how to run a business, from creating weekly menus to buying from wholesale markets to cut costs.

The learning curve was steep and Sahijwala switched from cooking everything from scratch to preparing curries and batters for bread in advance. She even bought a massive freezer, despite her husband’s reservations. “I told him that I am a professional now.”

Kallol Banerjee, co-founder of Rebel Foods which runs 301 cloud kitchens backing up 2,200 “Internet restaurants,” was among the first entrepreneurs to embrace the concept in 2012.

“We could do more brands from one kitchen and cater to different customer requirements,” Banerjee said.