Even if you are de-addicting from Swiggy and Zomato, it is impossible to ignore their 'I miss you' promotional messages and all their offers. After all, how often can you eat the same old canteen food? But wait, you can actually make healthy eating your new year resolution because Nesakaram Dabbawala will help in a different kind of food delivery. Food from your home!
The initiative has only been launched this year and Nesakaram aims to aid in the transport of home-cooked food from the customer's home to their workplace or college. "We start collecting the food from houses at around 10:30 in the morning, the pickup closes by 12. By lunchtime, we will try to reach our customers," said Dinesh Kumar Subramanian, founder of Nesakaram.
Gaining inspiration from Mumbai dabbawalas, Dinesh Kumar always wanted to bring the model in action at Coimbatore but was confused it. "In the month of October, one of my friends was hospitalised. He was advised to refrain from eating canteen food. Hence whenever possible, any one of us would go pick up food from his home and give it to him at the hospital. This made me realise its necessity, and I started working on it," said the 39-year-old.
Discussing the gameplan in detail, Dinesh Kumar informed us that they started with sharing a poster on WhatsApp and Facebook, which got an immense response, thus building their confidence. "Seven people work for the transportation of food from different areas of Coimbatore, including Podanur, Peelamedu, Kovaipudur, etc. We charge Rs 30 per five kilometres. However, we do not intend to go above Rs 60 as we began this initiative as a service," he says. "We also insist our customers use steel boxes only. We strictly do not accept paper or aluminium foil containers or plastic," he adds.
Nesakaram collects the tiffin boxes in TVS mopeds attached with storage space. Discussing their future ideas, Dinesh says, "Many customers keep asking us if we also sell home-cooked food. Which is why we thought we could consider that as an option as well. Currently, my wife, sister and mom cook, so we started a trial run by delivering to 17 customers. We will expand soon."