’No fancy menu cards, no marketing’: Entrepreneurial lessons from a food delivery boy

Sachin Ahuja is a student at Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K). However, according to him, the lesson he learnt from the cloud kitchen that was started by his wife during the coronavirus pandemic is what helped him understand ‘business’. 

Ahuja, who describes himself as a marathoner, cyclist, author and a father on his LinkedIn bio, is a former employee of IFB Industries and Maruti Suzuki. 

On 3 July, he put up a status on the professional networking platform, where he talks about a cloud kitchen that his wife started in the year 2020 to help Covid patients.

Ahuja's wife Richa started "Richa's Kitchen" in the year 2020, while she was also five month pregnant. The purpose of the cloud kitchen was to help elder members of the family, whose younger members were either away or admitted in hospitals. She started this cloud kitchen serving ‘homemade food’ at a time, when restaurants were closed and ordering food from outside was a necessity. 

Two years later, Sachin shares the secret to the success of his wife's business initiative. 

“No fancy menu cards, no marketing only good taste and quality she was able to make popular only through word of mouth, to the extent she can handle it till she got a full-time employee,” he writes in his post on LinkedIn. 

Sachin shares that what began as an initiative to help people during distress, quickly changed into a business model. 

The Covid-induced lockdown had pushed restricted everyone to their homes. Taking advantage of a husband who was working from home, Richa utislised the resource available at hand and Sachin therefore became the ‘best and most low-cost resource’ ‘to be utilized as a delivery boy and purchase manager’. 

Richa also utilised her domestic help for all kinds of preparation activities of the food to be delivered. 

these enabled the business to expand and Sachin informs, that later she also started ‘Richa’s Kitchen Supplies’ which was supplying packaging material to all of India from Chandigarh.

Sachin in his post has also attached a collage of images that confirm the satisfaction her customers derived from the services. the reasonable pricing of her food and Sachin's smiling ‘liftie’ proves the success of the business. 

The image also has screenshots of WhatsApp chats with her customers who benefitted from her timely service with the help of her husband and domestic worker. 

At this point, Sachin goes on to list the lessons he learnt from this entrepreneurial adventure. 

"My learning from this role is helping me today when I’m formally studying business from the eminent faculties of IIM K.", he writes. 

Here are lessons listed by Ahuja in his post: 

-You can survive in a monopolistic market as well if you stick to your quality.

-You don’t need huge money to start a business, it just requires empathy and intent.

-Ego and Entrepreneur never walk together.

-She ensured perfection in each delivery, personalizing every order. Taking care of your customer’s needs makes your business successful.

-Treat your employees well, they will do wonders for you. 😊

-Packaging speaks about your product, before the product itself.

Ahuja later informs that due to multiple shifting, the cloud kitchen is not operating but she has found a new way of ensuring she is building something new to follow her passion.

Also in the comments he informs, Sachin and Richa has been blessed with a baby girl, who he claims is ‘just like her mother’.