Eshwar K Vikas is the founder of Mukunda Foods, a QSR brand that wanted to build the McDonald’s of Indian foods. Mukunda Foods was selling dosas and idlis and the business was going well. But as the business expanded, the outlet could not manage the consistency of the food among the customers. The complaints of the customers also started to expand. Vikas added, “We decided to tackle the inconsistency issue by bringing in technology and hence started making robots to cook food at our outlets”.
When it comes to kitchen robotics, the global price point is upwards of 30,000 USD and to many food companies, it does not make any sense to invest that much into automation for a food business. But when other food brands get to know about Mukunda Foods has automated making food, Vikas was flooded with requests to sell the automation machines.
Mukunda Foods has developed low-cost robotic solutions for automation. Vikas has shared more about the automation practice as he stated “Hardware companies are tough to build and hard to grow. We have been able to weather the storm by building the largest kitchen automation company (in the B2B space) globally. With various of our products like Wokie (automatic Chinese and Indian gravy maker), DosaMatic (automatic dosa making machine), Rico (biryani making machine), and Fresh food vending machines, we at Mukunda Foods have made automation work for various brands.”
So far, Mukunda Foods have installed over 2500 bots in 22 countries. Some of its customers are leading brands such as ITC, Rebel Foods (Faasos), Chaayos, Ola Foods, Wow Momo, Swiggy Pvt brands, Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Armed forces, and IRCTC. The company has received funding from Indian Angel Network and Ncubate Capital. The company has raised 50 Cr funding in 2020.