Friday, August 17, 2018

FOODIE SPECIAL.... Craving Some Biryani


Craving Some Biryani

Biryani, a complex slow-cooked dish, has unseated staples such as pizzas and burgers to emerge as the unlikely champion of India’s fast food landscape

When you think of ordering fast food, a pizza or a burger tend to be the obvious choices. A kebab, tikka or a roll might make the cut for Indian dishes.
Biryani has always been the anti thesis of fast food. It’s associated with special occasions and memories of overnight cooking by khansamas using secret family recipes to achieve the perfect aroma and tender meat. It was also served with a generous sprinkling of family history and folklore.
Over the last few of years though, as food delivery apps, quick-service restaurants and take-away outlets have begun to dominate, biryani has emerged as an unlikely champion of India’s fast food scene, unseating the pizzas and burgers that used to dominate standardized fast food kitchens.
Food delivery apps say it’s among the most popular dish ordered and its demand far surpasses the western imports. Online delivery app Swiggy found that while pizza was the most searched item around the country in 2017, biryani was the most ordered. Uber Eats found biryani to be the dish that everyone wanted to start their New Year with. It was the most ordered dish on January 1. On the day of Wimbledon and FIFA World Cup finals, Zomato found biryani to be the star performer. Orders for biryani were twice those of pizza. And these trends are from across the country.
TS Srivats, VP of marketing at Swiggy, says biryani’s dominance is unchallenged. “Through our order analysis, we have found that biryani is the most popular dish across South, East and West regions in the country and stays strong as the ‘most loved dish’ on Swiggy,” he explains. “Hyderabad and Bangalore emerge as the biggest fans of chicken biryani, raking in the maximum number of orders. In fact, Hyderabadis ordered biryani even for breakfast. It is also one of the most ordered dishes on Swiggy late at night post 11pm as well.”
With food lovers showing insatiable appetite for the complex dish, entrepreneurs serving different varieties of biryani have entered the fray. Paradise, Behrouz Biryani, Charcoal Biryani, Biryani Blues, Biryani by Kilo and The Biryani Project are among the ventures trying to feed the craving.
While some, like Paradise, are well known restaurants hoping to cash in on the trend, a slew of biryani start-ups have also emerged. Many founders have no background in the food and beverages industry, but customers love their fare nonetheless. Vishal Jindal, a venture capitalist at Carpedium Capital, was at the helm of PE infusions in the food and beverage space throughout his career. He always wondered if pizza and burger chains alone can touch a turnover of 3,000 crore nationally, then why would even the top Indian food chains struggle to achieve a revenue of even 300 crore. Vishal saw biryani delivery as a lucrative field where the rentals and investment were lower and the business model easily scalable. He quit his job and founded Biryani by Kilo, a delivery outfit, with Kaushik Roy, another venture capitalist.
“The only focus was to standardize biryani making to the level of pizza making so that each dish would have the same taste. A major focus was to get a world class kitchen, ensure it is delivered fresh by cooking each order individually and work out on each order’s economics to make it a viable business proposition,” said Jindal. An IIT graduate, he said rather than working on one cloud kitchen and serve the entire city, he knew in order to deliver fresh taste, he had to set up multiple cloud kitchens to cater to different areas and be able to deliver biryani handis within the shortest possible time. From taking a year to open two such kitchens, Biryani by Kilo is now in the process of setting up a kitchen every month. It has raised 10 crore in investments and is touching revenues of 25 crore within three years. “Biryani delivery will be a $4 bilion industry in the next four years. It is one of the fastest growing segments,” he added.
From humble beginnings to being actively pursued by investors today, the journey of biryani delivery brands hasn’t been a cakewalk though. Raymond and Aparna Andrews, a couple who left their stable financial services jobs, say while they did foresee the model to be scalable, opening their first Biryani Blues outlet was not an easy task. The Hyderabad couple has now built a steady brand that has 25 company-owned outlets cross Delhi and NCR and plans to take the number of outlets to 60 by next year.
Adit Madan, the entrepreneur behind The Biryani Project, experienced a set back right at the start. He left his job, researched on the business model, and just as he was about to launch, his chefs left. “I had to learn how to cook the biryani myself. I knew it had to be a fresh preparation as our endeavor was to make a mark with authentic dum preparations. A year went into perfecting the art of making the right biryani,” he explains.
What is leading to the popularity of these biryani startups is the quality of biryani they serve, says Rohit Aggarwal of Lite Bite Foods, which runs a number of restaurant brands, including Punjab Grill. A self-confessed biryani addict, he says some of the delivery options he has tried are genuinely good products. “You either had street side joints or top-end and home cooked biryani options.
These delivery options have bridged that gap. From finest of rice variety, best ingredients, world class cooking techniques to personalized packaging, these services were the best that food lovers could have asked for,” he says.
Noticing biryani to be a top seller at his brand Street Food by Punjab Grill, Aggarwal, too, started home delivery in February. Soon he noticed that his outlets in malls couldn’t cope with orders. Being present in multiple cities across the country, Lite Bite Foods discovered biryani delivery to be a gold mine and are sprucing their cloud kitchens and setting separate lines in commissaries to be able to cater to the biryani rush.
Amin Ali
ETM 5AUG18

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