ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Rashmi Daga : PGP 2003 (CEO & Founder, Fresh Menu)
Rashmi Daga is the Founder and CEO of FreshMenu, a leading food-tech startup that delivers fresh, healthy, and delicious meals to consumers across India. After decades of experience working in the corporate sector, Rashmi started and successfully scaled FreshMenu.
FreshMenu has been an early innovator-–it was among the earliest food delivery startups that adopted the cloud kitchen model in India. The start-up began doorstep food delivery at a time when the service was still very new to internet consumers in the country. Today, Freshmenu has 70 plus kitchens across three cities in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi NCR and Rs. 150 crores annual revenue.
Rashmi’s success is further highlighted by the prestigious awards she has received, including the DC DTU Fraternity Forum’s Women Entrepreneur of the year 2024, ET Prime’s Women Entrepreneur Award 2019 and she has featured in Fortune’s 40 under 40 list (2019) among others.
FreshMenu has faced its share of ups and downs and despite the setback of COVID-19, it made a strong comeback in recent years demonstrating Rashmi’s resilient and capable leadership. The platform currently employs more than 1200 team members directly and many others through their suppliers and partners.
Congratulations on winning the young alumni achievers award. How does it feel?
Thanks, it’s been such an honour to be recognized by IIMA. IIMA is a big part of my life, for anyone who comes to IIMA Ahmedabad, there is this huge amount of love, respect, some amount of fear, because it’s so revered.
How has the institute shaped you as a person and your career?
IIMA gives you confidence to deal with the world out there and opens up your perspective. Before IIMA, I was probably a good student, but very protected and pampered. I didn’t know what the real world looked like. A part of the [IIMA] preparation was the grind that the real world puts you in. Everything in life is not fair. A lot of surprises can come your way, and you have to be prepared to deal with them. I think the biggest thing that it prepared me for was to open up the horizon: “I can achieve a lot more than I ever thought. Nothing is impossible.” If you could finish a lot of things just in time, along with all the surprise quizzes, make collaboration; you are just prepared for real life way better, and your standards are very high. So you have pushed yourself. I think that’s the combination that IIMA did, and I think the kind of network that allows you to build. Even today, like you could tell somebody that you are from IIM Ahmedabad then they would give you a meeting. That’s the power of our brand. There’s a lot of respect and gratitude that we could use the name and figure out things faster, better.
Tell us about your journey now, you worked in the corporate sector, IBM and then Johnson & Johnson. What motivated you to start your own startup?
My first job for a couple of years was in sales. The first few months were a real struggle to even adjust to this reality that you have to wake up every day and figure out how to convince somebody to buy something from you. But I eventually thrived in that process. So after a few years in sales, there was an itch to do something else. We had moved to Bangalore and there was a lot of startup conversation, new ideas were being discussed in every street, in every household, gallery conversation, office conversations. Bangalore was that city in 2008 we moved here for the first few years. I worked at a startup, and I think I felt like I’m ready to do a startup. I bootstrapped a startup for a year and a half and then I closed it down because it wasn’t working. It was too small. I knew that I hadn’t picked up everything that I needed to do in terms of an idea, research and execution. We also just had a child at that time, so that idea closed down. I went back to work at a few startups before starting FreshMenu. So it was the need to do something meaningful, to make an impact, to build something from scratch, why I did one startup. I closed another startup. I may do something else in future. So, yeah, startups are what we live in, breathe now.
What made you choose FreshMenu as a startup, as a food tech?
Back in 2013, 14, there was this host of mobile first businesses that were coming because smartphones were growing across the world, and mobile businesses were being thought of like people could have an app and they could order something and it would show up. So world over, there was a food tech wave that was growing. Freshmenu was a concept that was more unique to India, we wanted to bring kitchens closer to customers and deliver food when they order. The idea was fast delivery, and we didn’t want the high street cost. So a lot of things and elements of the regular FnB business were thought of in a new way, with mobile first as the priority. So people could order online. There was never a phone ordering or there was never a shop where they could go and order. So I think that’s the genesis of FreshMenu. Why global food? Because it looked like the palates in India were exploding, people wanted to try new things, explore the world in global food. There were not many benchmarks available, and it looked like the right thing to build a brand, which should be much faster for adoption, very low in terms of competition. You could offer value to customers, make it convenient to order wherever they are, instead of them traveling and parking the car. So a lot of these things came together. I don’t think it was just one factor that worked for FreshMenu.
What would be your advice for somebody who wants to walk on the same path of entrepreneurship and may be in the same industry?
I would encourage a lot of people to really try entrepreneurship. I don’t think there is any better learning ground than being an entrepreneur yourself, in terms of knowing the reality of building a business, building a team, building impact and the ownership that you have to show. I don’t think it’s something that is available in a lot of roles otherwise. Even if you do not succeed at it the learning opportunity is massive. India has also recognised that entrepreneurship is a skill. So a lot of people want to have people in their teams who have done something before and have tried to be an entrepreneur, because that learning is very powerful. In two years, you will probably learn what you would have learned otherwise in 7-8 years, and ability to take risks, ability to make a decision, a lot of those skills come with being an entrepreneur. The only couple of things that you should really know well is one, what are you passionate about and what you want to start and whether you can give it time. I don’t think anything can happen in a jiffy, so it’s not like a year or two of commitment. You may think, “I can’t put all my eggs in one basket, maybe I’ll keep my job or I’ll go back to a job in two years if it does not work out”. I don’t think you will ever solve the problems that the business needs to solve if you have a plan B in place. Entrepreneurship is like crossing a mountain. You can only move it if you know that there’s no other option.
Now that you have received this award, what are your plans for the future, professionally, personally?
One more thing you learn is a lot of plans are only for paper. I think what we’ve done for the last few years is amazing. We have built a fresh food business. We have built a new vertical in the FnB space. Cloud kitchens was not even a word, but cloud kitchen is now like a firm pillar in the FnB space. In India. We believe we really can scale and make FreshMenu the largest fresh food brand in India. Now that we have been here for 10 years, the aspiration is now to be here forever.To build a global brand out of India, global food business out of India. From a personal point of view, I think till you can keep making an impact, you would really want to be there, and you would really want to do this. This has been my love for the last 10 years. So I think this is what I know, and this is what I do every day. So I think the aspiration is to really now move this journey from good to great and build out a business that we are all proud of for our lives.
