This startup makes sure you get dosas in 60 seconds flat!

Sonali Chowdhury

Lip-smacking, crisp and super-fresh, the ubiquitous dosa is an iconic South Indian dish served up at street corners and fancy restaurants in almost every part of India and even overseas. But, unlike others who are content to simply savour this delicacy, Eshwar Vikas and Sudeep Sabat spotted a unique business opportunity wrapped in the folds of this crunchy ‘fast food’.

Enter the Dosa Matic, a table-top machine that dishes out mouth-watering dosas at the touch of a button -- in 60 seconds flat. The machine is the size of a microwave oven and can be customised to produce dosas of varying sizes and thicknesses, and regulate the quantity of oil used.

Eureka Moment

But why would two collegians wade into choppy start-up waters with a dosa-making machine? Foodies to the core, Vikas and Sabat loved eating out and sampling a variety of foods while in college. That’s when it hit them -- while the price of dosas varied wildly across and even within cities, fast food like burgers, pizzas and doughnuts cost roughly the same, regardless of where they were sold.

The duo summed up the answer in just one word -- automation. “There is a lot of automation and standardisation in Western foods in the retail segment, whereas Indian foods haven’t seen much automation in the retail space,” explains Vikas.

By combining technology with traditional cooking methods, their start-up Mukunda Foods aims to reduce labour in the dosa-making process, introduce standardisation and cut down on preparation time. Naturally, a standardised price would mean costs can be controlled and demand would hopefully increase.

“We raised Rs 10 lakh as seed capital from friends and family, prize money we had earned at various competitions and from our university, which gave us a modest grant,” reveals Vikas. Chennai-based Mukunda Foods was thus incorporated in May 2012 although the duo had conceived it a year earlier while they were still in college.
 
Teaming Up

Vikas and Sabat, both techies from Chennai-based SRM University, began working on their venture during their final year of college and were later joined by Sudarshan Lodha, as Director, Sales & Marketing.

While Vikas had some experience in working with start-ups, Sabat had worked in the area of factory floor management and vendor co-ordination. Lodha, a student of law and a graduate in finance, nicely rounded off this talented team. “My stint with start-ups has given me an insight into this field and I was determined to become an entrepreneur. I am also a total foodie and have always wanted to work in the food industry,” smiles Vikas.

Before thinking up the Dosa Matic, Vikas and Sabat had opened a quick service restaurant (QSR) selling dosas in Chennai. But they soon realised that running an eatery and manufacturing an automated dosa-making machine were two very different propositions. “So we shut the eatery and focused on the automation business. There are 300 million people who consume 1.2 billion dosas a day in India. There is a tremendous market that we can cater to in this segment,” explains Vikas.

Raising Capital

Mukunda Foods, an incubate of Indian Angel Network, which has also invested in the start-up, is in the process of improvising the design of the Dosa Matic by making it more robust and serviceable. The company has priced the Dosa Matic at Rs 60,000-70,000 per machine.
 
“If a hotel owner buys the machine, he can recover the cost in four months considering chefs are paid at least Rs 15,000 a month to make dosas,” reasons Vikas. Customers also get a 12-month warranty and the option of an annual maintenance contract at 10 per cent of the cost of the machine. “There are other automatic dosa-making machines in the market but these are bulky and cost around Rs 3 lakh apiece. Unlike our product, they also don’t offer customisation,” he adds.
 
With an eye on hotels, canteens and QSRs, and the interest shown by potential customers in countries like Singapore, the UK and Mauritius, Mukunda Foods hopes to earn a 25-30 per cent profit on the sale of its machine and break even by April next year.

Getting It Just Right

Vikas says Mukunda Foods has a seven-member team including electronic engineers, designers and fabrication experts in Bangalore focused on R&D. This team designs new components, assembles parts bought from vendors and tests the finished machine before dispatching it to customers. “At a later date, we plan to sell dehydrated batter, chutney and sambhar to people who wish to start quick service restaurants,” says Vikas.

Funding Was The Biggest Challenge

Like almost every entrepreneur, funding was the biggest challenge for Mukunda Foods. “Institutional investors in India do not want to fund non-tech companies unless you have proven your model and have a fair number of sales,” remarks Vikas. However, his start-up got lucky with mentors, who encouraged them to look at developing the product from the market perspective.

The unique nature of the business also brought its own set of challenges. “Product development in India is at a very nascent stage. To get the right type of manufacturing facility for your product is a big challenge. More so because when you have a prototype, you have low volumes, making manufacturers shy away, he says.

As it happens with every start-up, finding the right mix of talent was a daunting task for the founders. “Finding technology experts is a breeze but it is not easy to find technical talent and designers,” adds Vikas. “We also had to move to Bangalore from Chennai due to erratic power supply, which hampered our progress considerably.

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