Inspiration, can sometimes come in strange forms, and from even stranger places. Classmates Eshwar K Vikas and Sudeep Sabat were in one of the small but posh restaurants that dot the nation’s capital when they were served what can only be called a “very very bad” dosa. But out of the frustration and ensuing explanations from the restaurant came the idea for Dosamatic - a fully automated Dosa maker. Pour in the oil, batter and some water and it churns out a dosa a minute. “At the restaurant, we expected a lot of excuses, but what we were told was simple. There was only one guy making dosas,” remembered Eshwar.
If restaurants had to pay these guys lots of cash, while also putting up with inconsistency, why not automate the process? After all, a machine was not likely to throw a tantrum, get sick or “churn out bad dosas because it had a fight with its wife.”
But deciding to make a dosa maker and actually doing it were two very different things for the Electrical Engineering students, “The first time we went to have a hole drilled in a component, the workman asked me how big a hole. I held two fingers a little apart and said ‘This much’”laughed Eshwar. But they learned. Eshwar worked as a Personal Assistant to a Group CEO for nearly 6 months after college hours and weekends to learn how to run a business. Sabat did the same thing on a manufacturing line. “The money we made on those jobs funded the prototype and once completed, we began winning money from competitions. In one of them, the judge was from the Indian Angel Network who wanted to incubate us,” said Eshwar. When the two stepped out of college in 2013, they stepped out as the CEO and COO of Mukunda Foods.
The venture has done remarkably well since. More than 250 Dosamatic units have been sold since August 2014 and 30% of the sales are from international markets like Germany and Canada. But the team is already on the job with new projects. A Table Top Dosa Maker for households is set to be launched very soon and those for other Indian dishes like samosas and vadas are in the pipeline. “The market is huge. There are people who want quick Indian food — at airports, stations etc who have very few choices,” he declared. Well, if we can get a hot dosa, vada or some idlis without having to wait 15 minutes, then we’ll slurp some sambhar to that.