Mumbai: In the heart of Bengaluru, a culinary revolution is underway, led by the brilliant minds behind Up⤴️. Founded by IIT Bombay alumni, Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma, this dynamic startup is poised to transform kitchens across India. A touch screen that guides you through a world of delectable recipes, a cooking jar that wields precision in chopping, stirring, and cooking - all in one. Say hello to delishUp⤴️, the game-changer that's set to turn kitchen novices into culinary maestros. Tested in over 350 homes, with 10,000 meals and counting, it's poised to redefine how we approach mealtime. But that's just the beginning. With Up⤴️, the kitchen becomes a realm of endless possibilities. Stay tuned as we dive into a journey of culinary innovation that's about to make cooking an absolute delight.
Indiantelevision.com in an insightful email interaction spoke to Upliance.ai CEO Mahek Mody
Edited excerpt
On the initial challenges Upliance.ai faced when implementing the viral customer referral loop, and overcoming them
As a new company with its first product, we had to work hard to match the trust and faith our early adopters offered us. Be it in rolling out new features, offering them great post-sales support or even rolling out recipes they wanted. The entire team had to keep the customer as the centre of their focus to be able to match and exceed their expectations.
That being said, we have been able to build a loyal customer base and that is in part to the product and the ownership experience and this has translated into nearly 50 per cent of our sales stemming from referrals.
Our other challenge was our scale and availability. We began in Bengaluru and it took us a while to expand nationally. Our customers were referring people from Kashmir to Shillong to Thiruvananthapuram and it took us time to be able to meet that demand. This will likely be a challenge we continue to work on while our supply tries to match the demand.
On the specific features or aspects of Upliance.ai's offering that have contributed most to its popularity among customers
The biggest transformation we have brought to our owners’ is to redefine what is ‘home food’. For most of us home-cooked meals have meant sometimes boring, repetitive, healthy but not always tasty food and the only plausible alternative has been to order in. We are constantly exposed to novel and innovative food through content and media, but very few of us have the ability to cook anything that comes close to what we want to really eat.
Through the delishUp⤴️ we have empowered them to be able to cook anything they want, anytime they want it. They no longer need to worry about how a recipe is made, learning cooking techniques to get it right or even worry about if they know how to peel an onion. The delishUp⤴️ does the majority of the work and the decision-making for them. The freedom to make what you can imagine has made our owners fall in love with us.
Aside from the upliance itself, we have a great community that keeps in touch with each other through their daily cooking adventures, we also offer round-the-clock support which is only one tap away. The complete ownership experience has converted our owners into our most vocal supporters.
On the role that customer feedback plays in shaping Upliance.ai's product development roadmap and future innovations
We have been building with our customers in the loop since Day 1. Once we had our first prototype ready in 2021, we immediately had prospective customers cook with it so we could collect their feedback. This later was formalised into a Beta testing program in Bengaluru, we had over 1000 people cook with the delishUp⤴️ and used all their feedback both on the hardware and the recipes to keep improving the upliance.
Today, our WhatsApp community with over 400 people tells us what’s working for them and what isn’t. We use their feedback to implement changes and improvements and build new features. We have an open form for anyone in the Community to share recipe requests and a similar thread for Features and bugs. Several of our owners have signed up to test and improve new features and functionality, helping us test and improve the product everyday.
We expect to build all our future products also with our community and allow them to define what they want and how they see our products fitting into their lives.
On Upliance.ai managing to maintain customer loyalty and retention in a competitive market
Cooking and eating is a social experience and we have made it a part of owning a delishUp⤴️. We have built an extremely active and vocal community on WhatsApp. We have owners sharing their feedback on recipes, features and pictures of what they have been cooking at home. Several of them are also helping the newbie cooks learn more about food, and ingredients and answering questions about what to expect when they experiment with new cuisines and ingredients.
Our owners also appreciate our round-the-clock support through our recipe experts and the tech team. Through our “Call Me” feature, they can raise a request for a call back anytime they are stuck and receive a callback in <2 minutes from a team member. We are one of very few home appliance companies that offer such personalised support to their customers.
On any plans to expand Upliance.ai's product line or enter new markets in the near future
Our mission is to level Up⤴️ people's day-to-day experiences and quality of life with transformative tech appliances and we have only just begun the journey with delishUp⤴️.
We want to build more modern products including smart and connected microwaves and refrigerators. We are also looking towards offering more variants of the delishUp⤴️ in the future.
On Upliance.ai differentiating itself from competitors in terms of both product offerings and customer engagement strategies
We are India’s first AI-powered home appliance startup and we launched with a new category of appliances - personal cooking assistants. At the moment, our competition is really limited to food delivery services. The alternative has always been to learn to cook and that can be a daunting task for most people. With the delishUp⤴️ we are encouraging young India to cook at home and take charge of their health and nutrition. The delishUp⤴️ gives our owners the power to make anything they want from Day 1, they need only pick a recipe and the upliance will make it with them.
Aside from the cooking automation functions - chopping, heating and stirring, our differentiation has been how we have integrated AI into the upliance. We use AI to manage temperature and heating, making most cooking functions a single button on the screen. Example ‘Tadka’, ‘Stir Fry’, ‘Thicken Gravy’ etc are just basic functions we have built into the upliance after 1000’s of cooking sessions. Today, an owner can modify ingredients and the upliance recognises and modifies cooking presets based on its hours of training.
We have also incorporated ChatGPT to assist in generative recipes and an AI chatbot which can answer any cooking and delishUp⤴️ related questions. This has given our owners the freedom to cook anything beyond the 300 inbuilt recipes. We have had our owners try to recreate recipes from pop culture like Butterbeer from Harry Potter, and even vegan or low-fat versions of traditional recipes like Biryani and Kheer. All our AI and automation functions have been designed to empower the owner and give them the freedom to turn their kitchen into their playground.
We also roll out new recipes every Friday, so our owners have something new to eat and try every week. This keeps them coming back to try more. We design our recipes based on their requests and the season, festivals, etc. The past couple of weeks we have been rolling out festive recipes like desserts and snacks, during the monsoons we built soup recipes and even kadha.
On Upliance.ai tracking and measuring the ROI of its customer referral program
The delishUp⤴️ has changed the what our owners eat everyday and turned several of them into ‘Masterchefs’. This sense of pride and empowerment has turned them into our brand ambassadors. Several of our owners have hosted parties and get-togethers where all the food is cooked on the delishUp⤴️, others have invited neighbours and friends over to show off their new superpower. Our ability to build with them and for them has led to a very successful referral program.
Our referral program has been designed to be simple to use. Simply generate a custom link on the app and share it with your friends and family via text message. We have been able to track nearly 50 per cent of our sales to referrals and positive word-of-mouth.
