“There are limited numbers of restaurants, but so many home kitchens around the world,” remarks soft spoken Neeta Valecha, Chief of User Experience at MealTango.com. But, behind the soft façade emerges a stoic entrepreneur. Buzzing with ideas, her enterprise with hubby Saket Khanna, Director, MealTango.com, is one such offshoot of her inspired concept of bringing in home cooked meals, available across global kitchens and served by hosts registered under MealTango.com.
Stepping Up the “Aloo-Paratha’What began as a home-stay concept for the newly wedded couple in 2012 for tourists, students, boarders and professionals through home rental listing services such as Airbnb and 9flats websites at their London home at Angel Islington, took on a new path when Neeta realised the yearning of travellers on the go for authentic home cooked food. Saket explains, “In my stay abroad for six years, rarely did I get a chance to dine in homes. Unless you are married, or do your own cooking, dining in homes while you are abroad is difficult. Even when you eat out, the flavour of food in Indian restaurants abroad is not the same as home-cooked Indian recipes.”
In the initial days at London, Neeta had yet to apply for her work visa but often cooked Indian dishes for her globetrotting guests and boarders -- sparking off their home-cooked meal hosting concept. In one such instance, Neeta’s spark played host to a global Bollywood photographer of Indian origin who was invited to savour her home-cooked Indian flat bread variant – the ‘aloo paratha’. The appreciation and gratitude expressed by the guest provided the awakening moment for Neeta and Saket to explore the pos sibilities of adding home-dining for their global stay-in guests.
Meal Tango:“…We cannot change hosts every week as they are selected after fulfilling stringent physical parameters of food quality standards, ambience, hygiene and authenticity of recipes. Thus, we can have more hosts in a particular city for a particular type of food genre. As against a central kitchen service or a restaurant, food prepared by our host is not mass produced – thus nutrition is also not compromised.”
The ‘aloo paratha’ moment provided Neeta the deja vu experience to connect travellers to authentic home cooked meals irrespective of their travel destinations. “The concept was Neeta’s and then we looked online to explore if similar ser- vices existed at all. There were no concerted effort by others in this space,” noted Saket.
“We decided to work on our big idea but maintained it as a stealth project. We did not share our intentions until we decided to come to India end 2012 to build our website here. They did not think this concept would be viable in the Indian market. “We came to India to build the website at low cost, perhaps road test it in Pune and launch it globally, say in the UK, which seemed like the perfect destination for our product -- in an English speaking socio-cultural scenario known for its concept of Sunday lunches, high teas and year round tourist turnovers,” added Saket.
However, a representation at a local farmers’ market in Pune surprised the young couple as 150 people signed up in a single day for their meal hosting programme. “We realised that although most locals were hesitant to allow strangers into their homes or visit unknown hosts for meals, there was a segment in India that definitely was open to the home dining concept,” explained Saket. “Setting up shop in India and finally launching the site in 2013 was cost-effective and gave us access to excellent talent while also keeping a check on our operational costs.”
Spark to Marital HarmonyWhether it was running a library at hometown Jabalpur or cooking up a meal for roommates in Mexico, Neeta, the IT professional in the Data Warehousing domain was “always an entrepreneur at heart”.
She quietly discovered a similar entrepreneurial streak in her ex-Infosys Manager Saket, stationed in Virginia, US in 2009. A tech geek himself, Saket had by then launched his first start-up in the U.S. – LikeBucks, a product search engine, in 2010 but sold it off in 2011 as he embarked on his move to Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.
Despite the distances, cupid struck through a common acquaintance as Saket, now pursuing an MBA from Oxford University once again met Neeta in 2012 in Pune, as she pursued her IT career here. Marriage took Neeta to the UK and what began with one ‘aloo-paratha’ meal has now transcended into a concept that boasts of 160 published hosts online and around 800 plus total hosts globally who have evinced interest in being part of their meal service programmes. “Although all our hosts might not be listed on the website yet, there is every possibility that you will find one of our hosts in almost all important global destinations and extending by the day,” said Saket. Till date, we have proven an increase in our count from 100 people dining per month with our in-home dining service to 1000 a month, which we are optimistic to take to a lakh, monthly.”
Business Model, Future Potentials“Our revenue model is very simple. A host can sign up on our site for free. Once selected as part of our host list, they work out their costs and their price per meal per person. We take a small cut of around 10 to 20 per cent of the total one-time hosted meal. We remit the hosts through our payment gateways (separate for domestic and international hosts) for the service provided,” explained Neeta. “Our costs are primarily disbursed for maintaining and running of our website, the payment gateways, our sales and marketing team who promote our hosts and other in-house staff,” she added.
“Till date 1000 people have used our site for in-home dining offers and now we are looking at launching bespoke home cooked take-away meal services at Pune’s Magarpatta area. We are work testing this zone with an approximate potential of at least 50,000 people,” said Saket.
A Twist to the Office-GoersTo bring respite to office goers who are often bored of set-lunch menus available at restaurants or home catering services, Saket says, “Our advantage is that hosts can change their menus or even meal courses every day which brings in variety. But, we cannot change hosts every week as they are selected after fulfilling stringent physical parameters of food quality standards, ambience, hygiene and authenticity of recipes. Thus, we can have more hosts in a particular city for a particular type of food genre. As against a central kitchen service or a restaurant, food prepared by our host is not mass produced – thus nutrition is also not compromised,” adds Neeta.
“With a 30 pre cent quarter on quarter growth, we are also looking at developing the MealTango apps to tap savvy Smartphone Gen-Y and Gen-Z guests,” said Neeta. “We are looking to clock a four digit turnover figure in the next two to three months,” adds Saket.
Quoting on an international survey, Saket explains that in an overall $ 2 trillion world travel segment, about 8 per cent per cent of tourists travel explicitly for local food experience. “I would imagine that India’s potential would be 2 per cent of this ‘travel for food’ segment as India figures in the top 60-70 destinations for world travellers.” “In fact, 30 per cent of our business has come out of nowhere in the form of property getaways as well-heeled hosts have called on us to host theme meals for guests via MealTango.com at their Swiss Chalets, some combining health food get-togethers with a Zumba fitness regime or even organising a ‘make your own pizza’ on special wood fired ovens. People have also come forward in offering properties to host international cuisines or tie-in with local festivities and events. ‘Green Tokri’ in Pune offers special farm fresh meal tours and tractor ride packages. We are currently in talks with Cox and Kings for a credit line for MealTango.com. We are hoping to firm it up in our discussions in April this year,” he added.
By Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
