Daalchini is a brand of full-stack smart retail offerings that cater to on-the-go food consumption with a specialised supply chain designed to serve 6-meal-a-day needs of our customers. Its product suite has a complete platform to launch vending machines, micro-markets, automated kiosks and mobility solutions. Daalchini Technologies provides instant, affordable, healthy home cooked food to corporate employees through IoT-enabled ‘phygital’ (physical+digital) vending machines. It serves 100+ start-ups, co-working spaces, large MNCs, hospitals, educational institutes and residential complexes. In an exclusive interaction with Jayanta Ghosh, Editor in Chief of DeviceNext, Prerna Kalra, Co-founder of Daalchini Technologies talked about how Daalchini Technologies has been providing 100% contactless food options and snacks while on the move.
How Daalchini has been revolutionizing the tiffin service using smart mobility vending machines
Today the Average-order-value of Food delivery in India has gone up from ₹225 pre-pandemic to ₹400 now. However, meals served by Tiffin-services continue to be under-₹99. Daalchini taps into the segment with its unmanned distribution via smart vending machines. Today, consumers spend a minimum 30-45 minutes/ trip on two peak snacking timings: morning & evening. If on-the-go snacking options are provided via hygienically and conveniently placed vending machines in cabs/buses, consumers will surely benefit from this value-added service.
Daalchini’s engagement with 150+ cab drivers and fleet owners to provide food/snacks on the go
If drivers and fleet-owners are able to provide the value-added service to their customers then surely the benefit will be two pronged – a happy customer and increased income of 10-20%. Fleet-owners are always looking for bettering their margins on their asset: the cars. Hence, a IoT enabled smart retail solution with a facility to monitor it remotely through Daalchini fleet-partner dashboard becomes an easy way to begin with. As the adoption increases, fleet owners can see as high as 25%-30% of additional revenues from the service.
The investments being made to ramp up the expansion at a Pan – India level
Currently mobility vending is active in Delhi/NCR and we plan to expand this 1000+ cabs quickly before we expand this to other cities where Daalchini smart vending machine solution is available. We aim to have across NCR refilling stations for cabs to pick up stock for their mobility vending anywhere in the city. This ecosystem will further help in ramping up both no. of cab drivers opting for this business and sales from those cabs. We are also piloting the solution in cities like Mumbai and plan to take this to all the 11 cities where Daalchini is present. Daalchini added 3 cities in the last quarter and plan to 2-4 cities per quarter this year for smart vending solutions.
Future growth plans to spread the tech innovation in India & beyond
Daalchini is creating a sub-99 food store to enable D2C brands reach their targeted audience and help scale fast across multiple geographies using the community of automated kiosks. Daalchini has smart retail offerings for a variety of on-the-go use cases, drive daily retail across various channels and offer a variety of foods & beverages under one roof.
We are creating innovative retail solutions around vending machines and v-commerce. Our vision is to enable the Vending form-factor for every use-case from momos to pani-puri to ice-creams.
Our solutions are available for on-the-go food for workspaces, hospitals, educational institutes, hospitality, residential complexes as well as cabs/buses.
We already have the Product-market-fit, in fact we have already started generating revenues at the ARR of 14 crores in March 2021.
Hence, to establish the platform such that it can be launchpad for micro-entrepreneurs in retail-tech space, we want to build following:
- Supply Chain and Logistics service for Franchise partners
- Suite of Smart Retails that can extended to more use-cases
Key focus area, expansion plans and funds expectations to drive business growth
Once the platform is ready, we will be scaling it up with following:
- Geographic Expansion to more cities – both in terms of supply chain and technology service
- Platform for D2C brands that can be a launchpad for them when entering physical retail beyond their existing digital footprints
- Build a community of strong micro-entrepreneurs
Daalchini was started with bootstrapped funding from both the founders. Daalchini has raised 11crore so far in funding in last 2 years through Micro-VC Artha Venture Fund and few renowned angel-investors like Ajay Kaul (former CEO-Dominos India), Renu Satti (VP-Paytm, former CEO-Paytm Bank), Pradyumna Agarwal (Director – Temasek), Amit Lakhotia (CEO, Park+) and a few more.
Way Forward
Daalchini plans to become 2000+ smart stores or locations in this FY. We are already at 430+ stores and have added 50+ stores per month in the last couple of months. We were at 200+ stores in Jan 2021 and reached 430+ stores or touch-points by April 2021. We added 3 cities in the last quarter and plan to 2-4 cities per quarter this year.
