Biryani By Kilo Launches its First Dining Outlet in Delhi

COMING TOGETHER as a perfect marriage between food tech and delivery space, Biryani By Kilo (BBK) is a brainchild of Ex-Group COO at Zooropa Foods, Kaushik Roy who took not more than three months to bring his ideas on board. Roy, who was the man behind the launch of Pizza Express in India in the year 1997, has conceptualised BBK after seeing the gap in freshly cooked biryanis in India, unlike other brands where the food is cooked in bulk and repacked and sold.

Founded in 2015, BBK recently launched its first dining outlet in Connaught Place, New Delhi. The restaurant is designed in a royal theme giving a gourmet dining experience. Aiming to complete all of North region of India, BBK also eyes for its expansion overseas. The next two launches are slated in the month of February which will take place in Mumbai following to its neighbour city Pune. BBK works mostly in a cloud kitchen format and out of 16 outlets, three are dining.  BBK prides in delivering freshly cooked Khansama style biryani, which is prepared by orders.

Biryani, which was part of the Indian cuisine three years back has evolved as a category. According to a recent survey done by Foodpanda, India binged on more than 20,000 Biryanis on the last day of 2018. The survey further states that Biryani has emerged to be one of the most favoured lunch among Indians. This has altogether opened up a new scope in the Biryani Business.

Talking about BBK, it has both traditional and vegetarian biryani on its menu, offers three biryani variants—Hyderabadi, Lucknowi and Kolkata. It has also expanded to kebabs, kormas and desserts. As BBK makes biryani in individual handis (clay pots) only after receiving customer orders and not in bulk, setting up backend and tech operations for processing orders quickly was quite essential yet challenging for the company. To take the biryani experience above all, the company sends earthen Angeethis or aanch with each order, to preserve the smokey flavour and aroma of the spices used in the rice. Technology playing a major role, each step from order to delivery is monitored well by the company’s call centre, ensuring each customer give their feedback. Almost 80 percent of delivery is done in-house by their trained staff.

The recipe of the spice mix is prepared by Roy and has been kept secret. “We use high-quality rice which is raw basmati rice, aged for two years which is very delicate to handle. Everyone else uses six-month-old, artificially aged rice. All the ingredients are hand-picked like our masalas come from Kerala and we do in-house butchery. We have standardised the ingredients to make sure the taste is consistent through all our outlets,” Roy said in a conversation with BW Hotelier.

Currently, BBK is doing more than 30,000 orders in a month. With 550 employees in total, the company shows the Same Store Sales (SSS) growth at 40 to 50 percent. BBK is now gearing up to raise around USD 6-8 million in the Series A funding which will give a major boost to BBK's expansion plan across India.