On the 30th of every month, for the past several years, Rajesh Kulkarni, a student of PES University, Bengaluru, would religiously visit the cafeteria at 6.30 am sharp. This means he would have to wake up earlier than usual, stand in the queue for a few hours and of course, miss classes. All this effort so that he could pre-book his favourite ‘food court meal package’ for the entire month. If he missed out on this ritual, he had to settle for a regular non-veg platter, or worse still a vegetarian meal platter.
This was the practice till January 2022, until the campus cafeteria turned ‘smart’. Now, Kulkarni just has to open the SpaceBasic app at 6.01 am on the 30th of the month from his bed and book his meal package for the entire month on the app.
At 6.02 am, he shuts the app, locks his phone and goes back to sleep. Smart Cafetaria, indeed.
Covid and social distancing norms in the last two years have compelled campuses and office cafeterias across India to install tech platforms such as SpaceBasic and Isthara Smart Food Court to make their everyday processes simple.
“Not just simple and efficient, but money and time saving too,” says Madhavi Shankar, CEO and Co-founder, SpaceBasic, a Bengaluru-based edu-tech company that operates AI-powered cafeteria management systems. They operate 47 campuses across India with a minimum of 250 students and a maximum of 6,000. It works at Rs 399 per year per student for the campus to use the platform.
The platform integrates WhatsApp, SMS, calls, ERP, Face Scan, biometrics, flap barriers (gates that enable to enter a premise) and applies predictive AI analysis to help the kitchen understand what students are consuming, what’s going to waste, what is the time of the day it is consumed most and other such data. Shankar says that universities typically save up to 20 per cent every month by using the platform.
The simple addition of an RSVP feature where students confirm a few hours ahead of the meal if they can make it or not followed by QR code scanning at the table gives instant info to the managers. Hostel management can also view real-time student foot traffic, can keep track of student meal bookings and cafeteria check-ins. “We could get rid of an old dysfunctional tawa after students gave poor ratings and feedback of undercooked chapatis in the platform. The kitchen staff discovered that it would take 45 seconds to cook a roti on this faulty tawa instead of the regular 30 seconds which resulted in undercooked rotis,” says Shankar.
Another player in this sector is Isthara Smart Food Court, which manages over 50 food courts across Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, catering to over 1,50,000 users. Krishna Kumar, CEO and Co-founder of Isthara Parks Pvt Ltd, which runs the smart food courts, says, “In IIT Hyderabad campus, we enable food from the vendor they want (for example, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut etc) to be delivered to their hostel rooms at the time they want. In most other food apps, one has to check out from one vendor to order food from another. Here, the technology enables multi-vendor ordering.
Also, the food quality (temperature, freshness, hygiene etc) is pre-checked by the platform before delivering it. This way there is no compromise on quality,” he explains. The platform enables contactless dining, wallet payment options, mobile payments etc. They could also avoid crowding of students at the pick-up counter by enabling them to pre-order food and giving time slots.
Kumar says that the platform can have more features for optimisation of credits/coupons that the office/college provides. “I can foresee a situation where an employee is on a weight loss diet and does not order as much food as he used to before. The platform converts the food credits/coupons to salon coupons. The potential is limitless,” he says.