It is 9 pm and you haven’t had dinner yet. Your stomach grumbles, transmitting a ‘I am hungry’ message. But since you can’t go around breaking coffee mugs ( à la Thor), you’re forced to get off your sofa and trudge towards your fridge, only to be put off by its vast emptiness. You can’t order in, because you’re broke; or you’ve eaten so much food from nearby restaurants that the thought itself makes you sick. So, here you are, holding a cauliflower in hand, and feeling a lot like Hamlet, musing: to cook or not to cook.
It is to solve this eternal conundrum — of cooking or ordering in — that Ordook swoops in.
Do-it-Yourself
Started by the trio of Harshita Ravi, Abhishek Chandrasekaran and Anush Rajasekaran, Ordook, Chennai’s newest DIY (do-it-yourself) service looks to give Chennaites a chance to cook gourmet food in the comfort of their homes. “The cooking is pretty straightforward too! Most of the dishes that we offer can be made in 20-30 minutes.” says Anush, one of the co-founders.
Being foodies themselves, Anush says he and his co-founders always wanted to do something in the food segment. “It all started sometime late last year, when Abhishek was in the US. At that time, all three of us were still in our former jobs. We got a few ideas of what could work in India in this sector, and a DIY meal-kit delivery service seemed like a good idea. We did the requisite market research and the numbers added up, so we decided to go ahead and start the business.” While the conceptualising started around September 2015, the trio didn’t “seriously” start working on Ordook until January 2016. “That was when we quit our day jobs and started working full-time on the service,” Anush says. The start-up is self-funded at present but the founders intend to seek external funding later, as the business grows.
Armed with a spatula in one hand, 20-year-old Aayushi hovers over the stove as she waits for the mushrooms for her quesadilla to cook. The ingredients for the dish had arrived neatly packed in a cardboard box with intricate designs on the cover. She had heard a lot about this new start-up from her Twitter newsfeed and was eager to try out their food. “The Mexican Quesadilla I’d ordered was quite easy to make, but definitely took more than the 30 minutes that I was told it would. Apart from that, I thought the food was filling but not heavy, like gourmet dishes usually are. The packaging was quite nice too — they sent everything, from the oil and seasonings needed to the vegetables, cut and ready to use!” she says.
Subscription model
At present, the start-up works on a subscription model and the orders are made on their website ordook.in . “We went with that model mainly because most of the companies abroad that offer these services also use it,” Anush admits. But what’s the guarantee that this will work in India too? “This model allows for loyal customers to keep coming back. Every week, we offer our subscribers 10 dishes to choose from, of which three to four change weekly,” he says. There are two types of subscriptions that people can choose from — the first one for ₹600 gives you two meals (of ₹300 per dish) for one week and the second plan of ₹1,000 gives you four meal kits (of ₹250 per dish) spread over two weeks. One meal-kit serves two people. Subscribers are informed every week, via email, about the dishes available.
The cuisines offered at present include Thai (Phad Thai, Thai Peanut Chicken), Mediterranean (Veg Pita and Tahini) Spanish, Philippine, Mexican, Italian (Vegetarian Pesto Pasta) and Indian (Chettinad Chicken Wrap). Subscribers also have the option of paying cash on delivery and one gets to choose the day and the time each of these meal-kits is delivered. The ingredients that are ready to be used while cooking are packed neatly in colourful cardboard boxes.
Locally sourced
For the dishes, the produce used is sourced from SunnyBee, a Chennai-based farmer’s market that operates out of suburban Kolapakam. Other ingredients are either sourced locally or from other cities, depending on the availability.
Ordook officially went live on April 7 but has already created a lot of buzz in Chennai. “We keep getting more and more orders everyday. At present, it’s just the three of us (Anush, Abhishek and Harshita) doing the delivery and we’ve hired one other person to help us out,” Anush says. So, no time to cook? Call Ordook.