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Zomato-owned sports start-up Fitso has set up Daalchini kiosks, which can instantly dispense cooked meals, healthy snacks, and beverages without any human intervention.
Founded by Prerna Kalra and Vidya Bhushan, Daalchini has built IoT-enabled ‘phygital’ (physical+digital) vending machines, with an aim to serve the six meals a day needs of the customers.
Some of the food options available at these vending machines include healthy fresh meals like poha , upma , yoga bar, happy bar, yoga pulp, max protein bars, RiteBite bars, raw pressery juices, and aloe vera juices among others.
Fitso enables users to book a slot for playing various sports at the company’s chain of 75 sports facilities in Delhi-NCR. In addition to being present at Fitso centres across Delhi-NCR, Daalchini has also partnered with Spuddy, and few other sports and badminton academies.
“We have our own mobile app with which users can find the nearest Daalchini, view the food availability and offers in real time and make payments online. Post which they can go to the kiosk in the next 25 minutes or immediately to pick up their order,” Prerna Kalra, Founder, Daalchini, told BusinessLine.
Till now, the company has tied up with over 100 start-ups, co-working spaces, large MNCs, hospitals, educational institutes and residential complexes. The company began operations in April 2018 and has grown from two kiosks to 50 in FY19, and from 50 to 200 in FY20.
Before the pandemic, 77 per cent of Daalchini clients were corporate offices but they are now expanding to hospitals, manufacturing, pharma companies, in-transit options like cabs/buses, and residential complexes. Some of the Daalchini clients include MX Player, Aakash Educational Services, Bijnis, Reliance Industries, Vivo, and Whirlpool among others.
Revenue model
In Q4 of FY21, Daalchini grew from 200 to 310 and has opened over 600 kiosks by expanding the scope of its solution. The company is now doing over ₹1.2 crore in monthly revenue and hopes to reach ₹18 crore by FY22.
Talking about the market gap that Daalchini is targeting, Kalra noted that there is a huge consumer base who do not want to spend delivery charges on every order they make during the day. “Today, the food delivery AOVs (average order values) run from about ₹200-400 per order. However, 93 per cent of SKUs bought by consumers are sold under ₹99 and 80 per cent of the SKUs which even the FMCG giants sell are under ₹30. This is where we come in, allowing consumers to explore and instantly buy food saving delivery expense,” she added.
Daalchini was started with bootstrapped funding from both the founders in 2018. Now, Daalchini has raised 11 crores so far in funding in the last 2 years through Micro-VC Artha Venture Fund and angel investors like Ajay Kaul (former CEO-Dominos India), Renu Satti (VP-Paytm, former CEO-Paytm Bank), Pradyumna Agarwal (Director - Temasek), and Amit Lakhotia (CEO, Park+) among others. Going forward, the company plans to raise more funds to expand its solution beyond 10 cities and the form-factor to more use-cases.
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