Tailor-made Healthy Meals Start-Up Food Darzee Eyes Pan-India Expansion Following Success in Mumbai

‘BEING HEALTHY’ is a notion that has been on the rising spree amongst Indians over the past decade. To inculcate this notion, people in all walks of life, here, have largely invested in Gym equipment and diet. Paging through fitness regimens online and multiple physician sessions, they have learned that diet plays a predominant role in the regulation of fitness and good health in the long run. However, the real cumbersome process of planning and gathering the ingredients with the constant query in mind, “What would be the calorific value of the next meal?” has been making the basis for a maximised fall-out rate from having a healthy lifestyle. Club it with the fast-paced lifestyle of the millennials and Gen Z, who are always on the move and seldom do have time to cook and think for their meals.

Comprehending this void that existed in the market in which people crave for good taste, but do not really want to compromise on their health, Food Darzee, a Mumbai-based Personalised ‘Keto’ or Ketogenic Diet Meals providing Startup started operating from 2017, to provide the prospective health-conscious customers with door-step delivery of Keto meals as per one’s individual nutritional needs.

Using the name ‘Darzee’ which in Hindi means ‘tailor’, the brand reckons that each and every client of theirs, currently 500, is provided with tailor-made meals that meet their personal nutritional needs. Dr Siddhant Bhargava, Co-founder, Fitness and Nutritional Scientist, Food Darzee, who is also a medical doctor, while speaking about the idea of starting the Health and Nutrition venture says that he and his family have been in the wellness industry for a long time, and the ideation of Food Darzee was originally only to enter the segment of helping people lose weight by providing them with a proper meal plan. “We, however, saw that Keto diet specifically showed faster results in weight loss, and also added the taste value to it,” says Bhargava.

Sharing the comprehensive mechanism of the functioning and servicing of Food Darzee, Bhargava mentions that the prospective customers first contact their team of nutritionists with whom they discuss their workout schedule, daily eating habit, etc., among other factors, further to which the customers are grouped into clumps designated with similar nutritional requirements. There are 25-30 clumps comprising of 20 clients each, which vary in nutritional needs from each other. The team of nutritionists, then segregate the macros and micros of food based on the needs and the menu formulated to cater to the same. Following the ingredients segregation and measurement, the team of chefs then make delectable dishes of pre-planned portion sizes every day while ensuring that neither of the meals over the course of the 30-day plan is repeated. “We have brought in all the cuisines from the world including Continental, Mediterranean, Thai, Chinese, Indian, European, etc., and transformed them into the best Ketogenic meal by accommodating variation in the ingredients used,” informs Bhargava speaking about the venture’s aim to help their clients see results in just 30-days with novelty in cuisine each day.s

Dealing with the food industry, food handling, in recent times, has been looked after by the authority bodies with great scrutiny and hence to comply with the standards set by FSSAI, Bhargava mentions that the meats, vegetables, and other perishable ingredients are procured freshly on a daily basis and then cleaned and refrigerated subsequently. “Also, in the kitchen, the staff maintains gloves and hair caps while handling food,” added Bhargava.

When asked about the complexity faced by the startup in serving the diversely located clientele with door-step delivery, Bhargava says, “To service 500 clients spread across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane, we procure only food-grade containers for packaging of the food, to ensure the food can be reheated. Also, we make the daily four meals in two batches (2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon) to maintain freshness of food and also to keep its nutritional value intact. Additionally, we initially did face some logistics shortcomings, following which we now have a total of 55 delivery representatives who pick the food from our centralised kitchen in Mahim and move out to the locations twice a day i.e. morning and evening, so that the clients receive their food on time, every time.”

Shedding light on Food Darzee’s expansion and promotion plans, Bhargava says that they will set up a new kitchen of a 4500 sq ft size in Parel against the existing 800 sq ft kitchen in Mahim, Mumbai. Furthermore, they will open a centralised kitchen in Delhi in January 2019. Later they will explore the markets of Pune, Bengaluru, and Gurugram, seeking the right demand from these cities. “We are very active on Facebook and Instagram in terms of our promotional activities with over 2.5 mn views on each of our posts on an average on both the social media channels. Similarly, we would be also tapping video streaming channel YouTube by introducing certain small clips about Food Darzee. Hence, the digital platform for our promotions to reach out to the right audience and also create an interactive atmosphere for the prospective clients to directly get in touch with us through these channels, will be majorly focussed upon by Food Darzee,” concludes Bhargava.