Being Chef is a start-up operational in the F&B space and provides an exhaustive solution to daily food requirements in a healthy and economical manner by flexible mode of subscription and on-demand nutritional meals. They have been operational in Gurgaon since 2014.
Till date, Being Chef has served above 5,00,000 + meals and is NET PROFITABLE. For their remarkable and inspiring journey, Being Chef received the “TRANSFORMATION OF THE YEAR” award at Amazon SMBhav 2020 (biggest event for SMBs of India) in presence of Mr. Jeff Bezos and many other distinguished personalities.
The Man Behind the Idea
Shubham Maheshwari founded Being Chef 6 years ago and has since led the growth of the company. With almost 7 years of experience, he through Being Chef strives to make people healthy through their daily food intake. Previously, he has worked with a US-based consulting firm helping established companies with their sales and marketing strategies.
He also runs a self-help group named as People For People in which his team is bridging the gap between societal problems and their solutions. For this, he has been awarded “YOUTH CHANGE MAKER AWARD” in 2010. He is also a motivational speaker and has spoken in various events and colleges like FMS, MDI, IMI, IIT, NIT, RTU, etc.
Being Chef’s Journey
“Living an independent life was fun but soon I realized the challenges with it. I was staying with my friends and we hired a cook to manage our daily meals. After too much of effort, we found a good cook but were really disappointed with boring and repetitive meals. Finding a good cook is such a big problem (because of huge demand-supply mismatch), that you are afraid of firing him even if you have to face hassles like frequent offs (without prior information), limited knowledge, etc. We also tried cooking ourselves, but it was so much time consuming that most of the time we ended up eating from outside. This was an unhealthy option but there was no alternative.”
Being Chef started operations in March 2014, with a product, known as 5 Min. Recipe Kit. They were the first mover in DIY meal kit segment (which is talk of the town these days) in India.
Being Chef’s Recipe kit empowers buyers to cook anything in less than five minutes. It provides buyers with all the ingredients (chopped & processed) in EXACT QUANTITY along with a simple 8 step recipe card. By simply following those 8 steps, one can cook any dish in any cuisine with ZERO wastage of ingredients. Quality concerns are also taken care of as buyers can physically see the quality of the ingredients being used for cooking the food. Thus all hassles of managing ingredients, kitchen, pre-processing, etc. are taken care of, thereby resulting in saving your time for near and dear ones.
Difficulties faced During the Journey
“ We faced a lot of challenges in our journey. I started at an age of 23. Most of the team members were also around the same age. Initially, vendors used to take us lightly, but then our work started speaking. Also, I had zero knowledge of food. Understanding the industry was a little time consuming, but it also helped in innovation in our products, as we used to think with no pre-conceived notion that YEH TO AISA HI HOTA AAYA HAIN .”
Advice to all Entrepreneurs
“Don’t ride the wave of entrepreneurship because it’s cool. It is not that rosy, as it seems. So it’s really important to have a very strong conviction for your own idea. Do proper analysis before entering this wave. And once you enter, just stick to it no matter what. Make changes, adapt as per the market trends along with setting some new trends of your own too, evolve, struggle but stick to what you believe in.
Remember, to win a game you have to be in the game.”
To know more visit – http://www.beingchef.com/
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