A few years ago, when Yatin Varachhia and his wife got busy with work, they struggled to cook for themselves. Hailing from Gujarat, Yatin has always been particular about preparing authentic Gujarati food. So, they tried a few cooks, but nothing worked for them. That's when the idea of building a robot, one that would follow recipes to a standard, popped into his mind and he started working on it.
Yatin who is currently the Co-founder of Euphotic Labs, recalls, "I called and checked with my other friends about how they were managing with food and if they preferred to eat at hotels and restaurants and so on. The response was similar to my experience. Therefore, the idea behind developing this robot, named Nosh, was to help couples who don't have time to cook food and single parents or bachelors who are living by themselves."
Yatin founded Euphotic Labs with Amitkumar Gupta, Pranav Raval and Sudeep in 2017. It took them three years to perfect Nosh. Yatin laughs and says, "Initially, the size of the robot was that of a satellite but we worked on it to bring it to the size of a microwave. There were several challenges when we built the Nosh. Our idea was to make cooking easy and seamless for everybody. Hence, it was challenging for us to prepare the robot to handle the spices. There are many Indian spices and the robot was designed to differentiate between spices. For instance, if rava has to roasted, then it has to be roasted consistently. If it is not roasted completely the food won't be perfect."
So what exactly are the features of this robot? Yatin and his team has designed it in a way that it can be customised to fit the requirements of the user. He says, "The robot has an ingredients tray, a spice box, which is just like the masala box in our kitchen, a pan and stirrer, a chimney or the exhaust filter, water and an oil container. One can command the device remotely also to cook food. We have used AI to facilitate the cooking of food by following particular steps. For instance, if the onions have to be fried till they're golden brown, then the robot will make sure that happens."
Initially, the robot started with learning how to prepare the humble potato fry and now it can prepare up to 120 dishes. The team has already received pre-orders from around the world including from people in the US and UK. With so many orders rolling in, the team is planning to start a manufacturing unit in Bengaluru. Yatin says, "We have plans to manufacture the robot in India so that we can go from local to global. Bengaluru will have one manufacturing unit. Everybody goes from India to work in hardware industries like Tesla, Apple located in other countries. But with Nosh, we want Indians to work in our hardware industry and make it a successful one."
