US-based food-tech firm Culinary Digital, planning to start services in India.
Culinary Digital, a food-tech SaaS (software as a service) company based in the United States, is planning to establish its services in India and is in talks with organizations in the airline, hospitality, and non-governmental organization sectors.
Culinary Digital, a subsidiary of the almost three-decade-old Fulcrum Group, provides a cutting-edge food tech platform to address crucial issues such as food waste and food security.
The US corporation, which has been supplying the platform for over two decades, has 4,700 clients that serve over two million meals per day. ‘We collaborate with food contractors and food management firms. These serve school-age children, college-age students, hospital patients, defence service cafeterias, and old-age homes,’ stated Abhilash Krishnaswamy, Vice-President, Products, Culinary Digital.
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AI and machine learning’s roles
The US company employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to not only enable automation for its customers but also to assist them in reaching out to their end consumers and providing what they require.
‘It’s not only about what they’re consuming and how it’s made. Is it (the food) from a local source? Is it something that comes straight from the farm to the table? Is that anything that has the correct amount of nutrients, allergens, and everything else that a consumer should have? So many interactive technologies are something that we also give,’ Krishnaswamy explained.
Culinary Digital describes its entry into India as a ‘mission to disrupt the Indian food service business’ through the deployment of a SaaS platform tailored to the country and its users. Over the next two years, the company intends to raise the number of customers it serves to 4.5 million.
‘Realizing the market potential, we have made significant investments to organise the food industry with precisely specialized digital products and solutions inside Culinary Digital,’ Krishnaswamy added. We are confident that our food tech platform and outstanding culinary goods will assist the government in meeting its sustainability targets more quickly.’
Three major issues
He stated that the corporation discovered three significant issues in the food market, beginning with the business’s siloed nature. With the sector being the last to adopt technology, the company’s platform provided a solution that connected everything in the process.
The second issue it addresses is what is available to the client, who then wants to comprehend what they are eating. The company collects all of these facts digitally and informs clients whether it fulfills their health and nutritional needs or contains a substance that may cause an allergy.
The third factor that the firm brings to the table is where clients are going wrong, how they are managing the overall process if they have controls in place to manage food waste, and how they may boost their profitability.
It also provides real-time inventory information to other endpoints such as customers on one side and vendors on the other. ‘Our organization truly detects and connects the capital between all three points,’ he explained.
2 areas of assistance
Culinary Digital principally provides technology platforms to its clients in two categories. The first is back-of-the-house skills, and the second is front-of-the-house capabilities that will inform a client about who is eating what and which things are the most popular among those ingested.
‘Our emphasis as cuisine is not only to enable automation for our customers but also to assist them to reach out to their end consumers to deliver that sort of need and the ones that end consumers are looking for, as well as that degree of information,’ Krishnaswamy explained.
The SaaS platform also employs predictive analysis as an inbuilt analysis tool to assist cafeteria managers in determining whether there will be a change in weather patterns the following day or if a holiday is approaching, all of which will result in a change of plans and so save any food waste.
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The platform has provided both concrete and intangible benefits to the company’s clients. ‘Some of our customers reported increases in margins ranging from 1.75 percent to 3.25 percent as a result of waste management and revenue,’ he said.
Intangible benefits include an increase in customer satisfaction with the firm’s service from 68% to 78.5 percent between 2018 and 2021.
Culinary Digital envisions itself playing a key part in the next years as people become more interested in what they eat, with at least six lakh people becoming vegans by 2020.
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