CHENNAI : With an aim to address the long-standing problem of access to hygienic and fresh food for famished travellers, time-starved professionals and anybody on move, Frshly a food-dispensing retail start-up is serving fresh food. Launched in 2013, Frshly serves fresh and hot food from the best restaurant brands, within just 90 seconds, much like withdrawing money from an ATM. There are 18 automated outlets, at railway stations, airports, IT parks, corporate hubs and hospitals, across Bengaluru, Chennai, Secunderabad, Kolkata and Aurangabad.
The concept of this cutting-edge food solution came to Satish Chamyvelumani, founder and CEO of Frshly, when he was travelling by train. He wasn’t happy with the food options he got on his journey which triggered him to solve the problem. For people on the move and who are travelling, fresh, quick and hot food is a far-fetched dream. To fill this gap, Frshly was built and then partnered with branded players.
Satish says, “Frshly, operates on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform. This is a new concept and we are the first in the world to come up with this innovation. Frshly is filling a large gap by providing healthy, fresh and hot food, within 90 seconds.”
“We have partnered with branded players who have a good reputation in terms of taste, quality as well as hygienic food-handling practices. The technology in our systems keeps the food fresh and heats it up before being delivered to the customers. All one needs to do is pick, pay and eat,” he adds.“We have received two rounds of funding till date and we have raised $ 5 million from investors. The business model is profitable, scalable and has a huge market,” says Satish.
Based on what consumers have been ordering, and using their prediction algorithm, Frshly provides the product data to the restaurants to prepare a set of dishes just before peak meal hours. The food is prepared, hygienically packed, in the specific food-grade 100% biodegradable trays and labelled at the kitchens. The labels log in the name of the food item, price, time of packing and the shelf life of the product which is usually six hours from the time of packaging. The trays are then brought to Frshly outlets and fed into the machine.
The proprietary technology automatically reads the food labels, displays the food item with the price on the machine, and keeps the food fresh. To ensure that the food offered is fresh, once the food reaches its stated shelf life the built-in algorithm automatically removes the item from the menu.
Frshly recently became one of India’s first innovative start-ups to have been recognised by a global platform — Moodie Davitt’s FAB Awards 2018 which has awarded Frshly with the ‘New Food and Beverage Concept of the Year’ title. The start-up has been awarded for its innovative tech outlet deployed at the Chennai airport.Sharing his advice to start-up aspirants Satish says, “Never give-up is what I advice the start-up aspirants. One needs to go ahead with his idea and find a way to implement it.”
How it works
Based on what consumers have been ordering, and using their prediction algorithm, Frshly provides the product data to the restaurants to prepare a set of dishes just before peak meal hours. The food is prepared, hygienically packed, in 100% biodegradable trays and labelled at the kitchens. The labels log in the name of the food item, price, time of packing and the shelf life of the product which is usually six hours from the time of packaging. The trays are then brought to Frshly outlets and fed into the machine.