With almost 12 years of experience in the development of consumer internet and fintech products from zero to 250 million users at organizations such as Paytm, Paytm Payments Bank and FINO, she hardly had time for anything else. Hence, it has been a constant challenge for her to carry healthy food and snacks to work every day. Granted, she barely had time to cook breakfast or lunch or lunch snacks and craved fresh home-cooked meals. As food delivery became tedious and expensive, and the schedule did not leave too much wiggle room, healthy eating became more and more difficult.
While on a working visit to China, Prerna Kalra, co-founder and CEO of Daalchini Technologies, India’s first 24/7 instant snacking location, came across vending machines serving almost all types of fresh food – from fruits to momos and more. While the vending machine-based retail industry was so deeply pervaded in China, she still saw my father own a corner shop in a Tier 2 town and find it difficult to grow to other locations.
That was the inspiration and starting point from which Daalchini was born – as an instant snack destination that offers affordable, healthy snacks and home-style meals via vending machines and smart shops. Kalra founded Daalchini together with Vidya Bhushan, her colleague from Paytm, in August 2017. Operations began in April 2018 and grew from two kiosks to 50 in the 2019 financial year and now comprises more than 510 kiosks in 11 cities.
What was the goal when you founded Daalchini?
Daalchini started out as a distributor of fresh food from home cooks and Tiffin services. With covid, we have adapted the solution not only to offer fresh food from recognized cloud kitchens, but also to act as a platform for D2C brands to launch through our network of Phygital distribution points.
How did you reshape / scale operations when the pandemic broke out and you realized you could work on helping those in need?
During these troubled times we tried to be useful as much as possible by making some key strategic decisions. We added essentials like disinfectant, masks and wet wipes to help the customers who come into offices after the 1.0 unlock. In residential locations, we’ve added ready-made meals, groceries, and milk. All of this was done in a hygienic way, including disinfecting the kiosks, and we made sure we had 100 percent contactless delivery solutions.
How could you change the mindset of the people from the regular Tiffin services?
Daalchini has a six-meal-a-day concept. While the traditional vending machines only offer packaged snacks and beverages, Daalchini focuses on providing a complete mix of products with frozen / chilled meals, meal sets, snacks, baked goods, immunity boosters, healthy drinks / energy drinks, yogurt and more. We have also worked with cloud kitchens and home cooks for fresh meals. Our food boxes contain details about the food in the pack, the date of manufacture and the best before date. We also mention the seller’s name and the seller’s FSSAI license number.
What did you do differently to gain the trust of your customers?
In order to gain repeatability and loyalty from our customers, we take a three-step approach. Offer healthy meals with the right balance, be consistent with service and refills, and stay innovative. This approach has enabled us to deliver over five million meals through our smart contactless solution. Almost 68 percent of our customers are regular customers.
What operational and other challenges are you currently facing?
After the machines were set up, cloud kitchens and tiffin services were initially not prepared for machine-specific foods and we were faced with challenges in determining the quality, as there were no specifications for this. Then, together with food consultants and food experts, we created our own checklist to find out what was important. This became our bible and set of rules when we got on cloud kitchens and tiffin services. Customers were particularly concerned about hygiene and safety after the pandemic.
Daalchini is a very interesting name. Can you tell us how you decided to do this?
When we started Daalchini, we wanted to be associated with healthy, home-style food. We thought of different names, but one thing that stuck was Daalchini, which is Hindi for cinnamon. Daalchini has long been used in Indian households for its medicinal benefits and is a spice that is used in both savory snacks and sweets alike. And that’s how we got our name!
All images courtesy of Prerna Kalra
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source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/30/prerna-kalra-founded-daalchini-for-customers-to-have-healthy-meals-fast/
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