HYDERABAD: When Surbhi Guha decided to eat healthy for the nth time, she was determined to not give up this time. She sat down to figure why people like her give up eventually and found problems that knew she needed to create solutions for. And so, Sortizy was born, an app that gives you your ingredients, calculations and even recipes, on a platter.
“For my first job experience as a business strategy consultant, I had moved to Hyderabad from Warangal. It was the first time I had experienced living away from home and managing the house all by myself. My colleagues and I would frequently discuss how we’re unable to manage our diets due to lack of time, knowledge and experience. We thought, if all aspects of our lives are personalised and digitised, why can’t food be,” Surbhi tells CE.
She and her then colleague and now co-founder Sagthi Prakash decided to delve into more research, build connections and speak to prospective users — everyone aligned with the pain point. They were determined to solve the problems regarding what to eat, purchase, how to cook with ease and so on. They participated in a few businesses college events across the city and won them all. This boosted their confidence and got them connections to a lot of industry experts. “During this time, we were successful to get a grant from Ministry of Electronics and IT & IIT Hyderabad. Though the journey became extra challenging as we had started during pandemic our mentors and incubator WE Hub supported through it all,” she shares.
The duo has come a long way with over 100k acquisitions on Android and iOS; they won the ‘Best app in India in Everyday Essentials’ category and the ‘Rising Star of India’ by Google Play. They are currently pioneering video shopping in the food space and created a community and supported 500+ food creators to publish content and earn well with them.
“Users cooked 75,000+ hours with step-by-step recipe guides that we have been creating in regional languages like Telugu, Odia, Marathi, Hindi etc. We were also selected by WE Hub & ARHA Media as the first incubator startup to receive the revolving funds and have successfully raised our pre-seed funding of Rs 1.5 crore from various experienced VCs, angle investors and SISFS Govt. fund facilitated by WE Hub. Today, we are actively working with food delivery apps, 40+ FMCG brands and grocery delivery partners to connect India better with food by discovering recipes, products, restaurants of their choice, making meal plans and grocery lists easily, cooking with step-by-step guides in their regional language, becoming a food content creator, sharing knowledge and earning well,” she shares excitedly.
Through Sortizy video-shopping is easy where users can purchase the product being endorsed in a video by any creator/chef/influencer. They are also working towards grocery shopping where anyone can buy shoppable recipes and grocery for the meal plan.
The duo has some exciting plans ahead. Surbhi shares, “We hope everyone who wants to share their food journey in the form of recipes, videos, products, or restaurant recommendations joins the platform and encourages others. We are working with businesses (kitchen product brands, FMCG brands, restaurants, and food delivery platforms) to help them connect better with the users with the power of content and the community of creators. We are also looking forward to connecting with grocery delivery platforms to deliver grocery of meal plans that users are creating on the platform.”