Hyderabad: Food subscription is home away from home for techies

Hyderabad: Tech-savvy Cyberabad, home predominantly to techies, is rewriting the rules of how they eat. Residents savour of home-cooked food, but through a subscription-based service.

Not only bachelors but also families are subscribing to home-cooked food using a monthly subscription plan. Unable to cook because of work pressures or the hassle of sourcing ingredients, or simply because they don't like cooking, people are happy to order their food through a catering service.

Seeing the demand, several subscription-based food delivery start-ups have come. The menu is expansive and healthy. At least 80 per cent of their subscribers are families from Pragatinagar, Nizampet, Ayyappa Society, KPHB, claims city-based start-up KLCP Healthy Foods.

“Our market is primarily in Kukatpally and Hitec City. The monthly package ranges between Rs 6,000 and Rs 18,000 for lunch and dinner, according to the number of people in the family. The demand is increasing, so we are expanding our kitchen to cater to at least 3,000 meals daily,” said KLCPHF managing director Dr Kamireddy Suresh.

The Madhapur-Hitec City area has an app-based subscription model. Here techies order lunches on a weekly basis. “Even though we cater from Cyberabad to Begumpet, our customers are predominantly in areas where there are more IT companies. With 80 home chefs, we cater to thousands of techies at their offices with home-cooked food on a monthly basis, both lunch and dinner,” said Mr Chaitanya Degala of Tinmen.

Mr Kaushik Mondal from Kolkata who works in Hyderabad, says, “I order food from a Bengali chef using an app. It does taste like home food. We are a group that regularly subscribes for food. Cafeteria food is not very appealing and outside food is not so healthy.”

The food service benefits the food providers as well. Some of them, like Ms Neha Singh are home makers who work for Tinmen and earn some money. “Cooking for different people and giving a homely taste to the food is very satisfying,” Ms Singh says. The subscription services are slowly expanding to other parts of the city too.