From Swiggy to Veeba⁠— food companies bet DIY and readymade products will conquer kitchens as home chefs get tired of cooking

• Five months into lockdown, with work from home becoming as strenuous as ever, people are getting tired of cooking and resorting to DIY kits and ready-to-cook meals.
• Foodtech unicorn Swiggy has been experimenting with DIY food kits.
• Meanwhile, popular sauce brand Veeba has just announced its ready-to-cook gravy in a bottle.

When the lockdown began, everyone turned into a home chef. From Dalgona coffee to biryani and even rasgullas being made at home, images of home-cooked meals were shared, instagram posts with recipes were uploaded while parents wondered about the hidden cooking skill of their child.

But five months into lockdown, with work from home becoming as strenuous as ever, many people are tired of cooking and it's back to “Can we just have maggi today?”.

And this has led to DIY and readymade products filling the market from new players.

Readymade meals for quick fixes

With the interest to cook for a longer time wearing off and people looking at more and more quick fixes without having to order from restaurants, another market claimer is the readymade food segment. Popular sauce brand Veeba has just announced its ready-to-cook gravy in a bottle. The founder claimed that the gravy will bring restaurant-like taste to the food.


The new flavour – DIY

The Do-It-Yourself market has seen many new entrants. Foodtech unicorn Swiggy has been experimenting with DIY food kits. Recently, the startup partnered with the gourmet festival World on a plate and was delivering DIY Meal kits across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Sequoia-backed Rebel Foods had also introduced a range of readymade meals and DIY kits. I think there'll be a natural tendency towards more at-home cooking and consumption...We are creating an umbrella under a program called Eat.Sure and giving this platform for other food entrepreneurs to come on board and build brands around ready-to-cook, ready-to-eat, ready-to-use, and so on,” its CEO Jaydeep Barman had told ET in an interview. According to an Entrackr report, to fuel these expansion plans Rebel Foods has also secured more funding which has hiked its valuation to $820 million, just a little short of being a part of the unicorn club.

Meanwhile, the Riyaaz Amlani led Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which had also launched a food ordering app, has also been offering DIY kits, which also offer step-by-step instructions from chefs.

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