Feedomy — Changing how students eat.

Author:

Muskan Vaswan

Official Email. Academic Email. LinkedIn

Value proposition

Too long we have been ingrained with the idea that in college, we have to eat what we get. The food provided at colleges and universities is often known to be substandard, especially in India. We aim to change that. Why are mess halls the places where we have to force food down our throats, whether or not we like it? Are they as nutritious as they promise to be? Are they efficient in their system of provision?

So many questions and it becomes evident. Change is required.

Students often find themselves under the grasp of bad eating habits. “Why”, you ask? well, it’s because the food that they are often provided is made for a large body of students without considering that their tastes and nutritional requirements may vary. This may make the food unappealing, forcing the student to look for alternatives to the meals in that of a mess hall.

It needs to be understood that no matter how well a dish is made, there is no guarantee that it will fit the likes of everyone.

And while it may not be ideal to try and please everyone, the issue at hand is still impactful enough to the student life that it deserves more consideration and deserves to be seen as an issue.

Solution

Our Solution is to Revamp Nutrition in college by applying an unconventional catering structure.

Basic idea

Our basic idea is to adopt a Multi-cuisine food joint/restaurant style canteen-catering structure, ensuring student nutrition through AI-based computations and using an app for efficiency.

Ideal working

The first time the students open the app they enter their details and general preferences. Every meal forth, they open it to a menu, complete with nutritional counts. Two sets of suggested meals will be highlighted. They may choose between them or make an entire meal by themselves, within certain requirements*. They place their order on the way to the mess hall. A predicted time for the order will be given. At the end of the time, their complete meal will be ready on a tray to be picked, not unlike McDonald's.

Advantages

• More likely to fit the tastes of the students
• Nutritious and healthy
• Avoids chaotic canteens
• More hygienic than open food buffet
• Larger variety
• A middle ground between a canteen and a restaurant, which doesn’t require waiters but you still place your order from a good amount of variety
• Paid for with the college fee itself
• Saving time
• Dietary preferences (inclusive of allergies etc.) will be accommodated for
• Allowing universities to outsource food systems

Disadvantages

• Potential lack of disciplinary practices
• Some colleges would prefer that their students be accepting of whatever quality is being
• Potentially expensive.

Customer Segments

Final user

The final user of our product is ideally a school/University student in his/her/their late teens and early twenties.

Things we can conclude from this:

• Developing tastes
• Minimal efforts and attention towards everyday activities like food
• Active and requiring high amounts of energy
• Attracted to taste and presentation of food, more than nutritional value
• Having fewer monetary resources at their disposal

Approx market size = 27,540,000 students (30,600,000 in total and assuming 10% are day scholars.

Direct Customer

Universities striving to reach a higher quality of education environments.

Why would they choose feedomy:

• To be able to advertise a better student life
• To increase the efficiency of students by ensuring their nutrition which will, in turn, make them more productive and higher achieving.
• Increasing progressiveness in terms of student appreciation

Market Cap:

Total student population in 2018–19 was 3,75,00,000 students. Assuming this number does not grow and 60% of them opt for hostel facilities that leaves us with about 20 Million possible customers, who’s life we can impact.

Customer Relations Or GTM

Get

The main means of getting customers will be by approaching Universities and schools with insufficient food provision structures.

Approaching universities with a bad reputation in the market for its food quality and student life will be the first plan of action to make a sudden and very distinct presence in the market thereby increasing future customers.

Keep

This will entirely depend on the student satisfaction and reviews of the company and its food to the university management.

To ensure this, the plans will have to be consistent and student-friendly and flexible to their needs. The app and the variety will change and adapt to seasons of the trend.

Regular quality test system* will have to be established. Regular polls and surveys to ensure customer satisfaction will also be conducted.

Grow

Advertising the outcomes and customer satisfaction of the product with a positive image will be crucial to the growth of the customer base.

The growth and expansion will depend on the goodwill we set in the market through our very first customers.

Channels

Physical Channels

Cafeteria/Mess hall of a school/university along with a kitchen.

Transportation channels

Raw materials like vegetables, flour etc will be regularly delivered for cooking. The initial destination will be supermarkets and fruits and vegetable vendors, the final destination will always be the university/school where the catering is set up.

Virtual channels

The virtual channels will be an application system that will take the order from the user and then take it to the chefs and order managers of the restaurant in an efficient manner.

Prototype and App Vision

Technologies Required

The Mobile App will be developed using the following Technologies:

• Flutter
• Database: PostgreSQL or MySQL
• Docker
• Custom models for meal predictions will be in Python

Additional Technologies and Website Technologies:

• Django, Python
• CSS, HTML
• React (Optional)
• Bootstrap

The Company will use an optimised ORM in the future of the business to handle kitchens and staff that will be set up at multiple locations

Revenue Model

Income Stream and Process

Payment Intervals

Semester/Quarter-wise payments.

Tentative Revenues

If one meal costs an average of 80 Rs/-, then for four meals a day the student will pay an average of Rs 57,600/- in a semester (6 months). Assuming there are 2000 students in a given university on campus the total semester revenue would amass up to Rs. 11,52,00,000 /-. Which is plenty to run Our Business.

Costs and Budget

Cost of money, Taxes

“Services provided to an educational institution, by way of catering, including any mid-day meals scheme sponsored by the Government attracts no GST”

Partnerships

Suppliers

Tying up with wholesale grocery producers for raw material and with growing organic food startups:

What do they get:

1. Their products being marketed to a large audience just by being circulated regularly among a large student body
2. A consistent customer growing at potentially their own pace.

What do we get:

1. Lower Prices and costs for large scale material
2. Higher quality of products at better rates
3. Goodwill of the customer base of existing brands

Buyers

Biggest partners from buyers will remain Private University and Schools.

What do they get:

1. Quality of food, depicting higher standards of the University
2. Outsourcing their food system will allow them to for-go the hassle of customer care and its management.
3. Marketing of our company will automatically market their university, which is particularly fruitful for growing universities.

What do we get:

1. Consistent customer base
2. Venue and physical presence provision
3. Maximum revenue

Marketing

The marketing strategy* will include partnerships with:

1. Food Influencers
2. Student food and health enthusiasts
3. Student organisations
4. Health organisations and University Gym Organisations

Education/Impact/Social organizations

1. Government Schemes:
2. Establishing our organisation under the mid-day meal scheme will come with its array of benefits. This should be possible because our initiative comes under improving the health of a large segment of the Indian population, i.e, the youth of India undergoing the education.
3. Organisations that promote quality of higher Educations

Risk Analysis

The risk of starting such a business would be fairly low in comparison to others. However, it does exist. The following are the risk factors

• The threat of large cooperation quickly duplicating the model and creating competition
• People’s unwillingness to accept an unconventional way of providing food
• Failure to keep up quality and management while scaling