Speaking to
Business Today, Ameya Deshpande, 33, co-founder of Authenticook shared how the idea for the start up occurred during a trip to Ladakh with his wife Priyanka and friend Aneesh Dhairyawan who are also the co-founders of Authenticook.
"We had gone to Ladakh and were visiting the Leh market, where to our disappointment, we found burgers and pastas all around us," he adds. So, the three wondered the best way to interact with someone from another community. The answer, as Deshpande says, was food.
Deshpande and co have roped in home-chefs, primarily women, who, they believe along with earning also get a way to socialise and meet new people through their platform. The start up operates in seventeen cities - Agra, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Goa, Gurugram, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kochi, Kolhapur, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, Puducherry, Pune and Udaipur. They are likely to expand to more places in the months ahead.
The business model adopted by Authenticook is quite simplistic. "For instance, if the meal is for Rs 1,000, we keep 20-30 per cent and the balance goes to the host. It is all commission-based," Deshpande explains.
Authenticook's innovative model was recognised by Amsterdam-based travel e-commerce giant,
Booking.com, who funded them for 200,000 Euros or Rs 1.5 crore in 2017. "We were the only Indian startup to make it and we were given the full amount we asked for," Deshpande says.
