Be it AI, machine learning or drones, technology is enabling the food delivery system in India. Read on to know more about it…
If you think that a fancy robot can deliver food in an Indian restaurant is an imagination, then you may be wrong. In case, if you order a chicken biryani from internet restaurant company Rebel Foods, chances are that it would be made by a robot.
Be it using Artificial Learning (AI) Machine Learning (ML), or deploying drones for food delivery is going all out to reach the Indian consumers. The Mumbai-based firm, which is known for its brands like Faasos and Behrouz Biryani, is looking to use artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to automate the processes at its network of cloud kitchens.
The Concept
Rebel Foods uses the concept of cloud kitchen. A ‘cloud kitchen’ is one that does not offer dine-in facility and accepts food orders only through an online ordering system. Several processes at Rebel Foods’ kitchens are already automated.
Some high-tech restaurants in India aim not only to standardize food items and maintain the quality and taste of food in its kitchens, but also to deploy less manpower and reduce human error. These are AI and Internet of Things (IoT) enabled devices where we feed in the recipe to make the dishes. For instance, a dish like masala paneer tikka has 30 machine learning tags which help classify customer preferences such as the level of oil, calories and the number of herbs in it.
In addition to using Machine Learning, its kitchens are able to forecast the number of orders they can expect to get at any given time and location, and the kind of inventory they need to maintain to fulfil them. The foodtech firm has already seen a 60% to 70% reduction in food wastage through the use of Machine Learning and data sciences. Moreover, by being able to predict demand, the delivery time has reduced by 20% to 30%.
Growing Trend
Rebel Foods is among a growing number of food tech companies in India that are betting big on AI, machine learning (ML) and data analytics to automate their processes. The applications range from predicting demand, understanding customer preferences, preparing dishes and delivering the orders in the fastest possible time.
According to RedSeer Consulting, a research and advisory firm, the online food ordering and the delivery market in India is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of more than 45 per cent to reach $11 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by 2023. All the major players are pushing to drive efficiency by employing cutting-edge technologies so as to be able to corner a bigger bite of the market.
App Based Automation
Food delivery firm Swiggy is being equally aggressive in its effort to automate. It is building an AI-driven platform for hyperlocal discovery and on-demand delivery. One of its innovations involves ‘cataloguing’, where machine learning is used to automatically classify the images of food items as vegetarian, non-vegetarian and ‘eggetarian’. Swiggy, is also using technology to give recommendations to customers.
Swiggy plans to use technology to deliver food within 32 minutes. Currently, Swiggy has close to 1.20 lakh active delivery partners and the mobile devices of these partners beam back their location to Swiggy’s servers every few seconds.
Swiggy uses Machine Learning-based models to predict the time it would take them to reach the restaurants, the time to prepare the order and then to deliver the food. Based on these, the system finds the best route and the rider who can deliver the product in the fastest possible time. The technology also enables Swiggy to factor in the impact of weather conditions, traffic patterns and road construction on the time taken for delivery.
