The Dawn of the Biggest Game Changer

With the increasing awareness and the need to make healthy homemade food accessible to everyone, “Shero” began as a journey in August 2020 by connecting people directly to women who prepare vegetarian home food with love every day.

Shero is rigorously working on a strategy to transform more than 1 million homes into internet-technology-powered business spots and provide life-changing opportunities for thousands of women to become financially independent by utilising their passion for cooking.

Mr. Thilak Venkatasamy and Ms Jayashree Thilak, the revolutionary minds, who have been in the Food and Beverage industry for 25+ years, started Shero Home Food as India’s first-ever Brand that brought the Uber- Model into Indian Home Food Industry.

Shero Home Food is a part of Barottas Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. The idea was simple; Shero Home Food aspired to make home food standardised globally by using the Shero Food Technology.

It has enabled “Instant Home Food Delivery” possible through the ABC Cooking Model and HTC technology which allows Home Makers to cook food in less than 10 Minutes and with Zero Wastage.

This platform offers complete support in training for hygiene and packing, food licenses, demand generation, delivery, and quality assurance. They place major emphasis on the fact that the soul of its business lies in the humble homemakers whom they proudly call “Kitchen Partners”.

Shero aims to instil a crucial understanding in people that teaches others that cooking is not a menial chore or base task to have frowned upon. Rather, Kitchen utensils are symbols of accomplishment, passion, and life-sustaining excellence.

Shero Food Technology helps everyday homemakers become in-demand super-chefs. This is precisely why Shero’s ‘cook from home’ program is becoming a revolution in the food industry.

Shero aims to harness the culinary skills of homemakers and enables them to uplift their lifestyle and enhances their lives for betterment outside of their kitchens.

Mr Thilak and Mrs Jayshree Thilak are prime examples of the phrase: Power couple. With around 40+ years of combined experience in the Food and Beverage industry, they always believed in bringing back the importance of home-cooked food in society, and that’s what bought about the eureka moment for “Shero”.

Mr Thilak is a mechanical engineer by profession and has spent a large part of his life and career experimenting with new, innovative, and successful business models. He is optimistic, spiritual, and a man of principle, honesty, and extremely logical, which reflects in his work too.

In his own words, Mr Thilak has mentioned, “Shero is more than just a business. It represents more than women empowerment. Together, let’s make Shero a vision for the future”, he says with absolute confidence in his team.

In 2020 while the world was shackled due to the impact of COVID-19, the “Shero home food” began as an initiative that intended to provide life-changing opportunities for thousands of women to become financially independent by utilising their passion for cooking.

Ms Jayshree Thilak is a dynamic person, a woman with an infectious smile and a charismatic personality. "With some groundwork, we found that the number of hours a woman spends cooking has only doubled after the lockdown. So why not turn it into a career option and take their talent beyond four walls? This way, they can make good money without going out of their way and also support their family financially,” says Ms Jayshree Thilak, Co-founder.

She remarks with pride and joy, “While we do have a lot of kitchen partners currently working with us today, we need to grow and introduce a lot more Sheros to the world.”

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” this is the phrase that best defines Shero’s journey. The pioneer of Shero, i.e. Mr Thilak, had been in the Food and beverage industry since the start of his career.

In the year 2014, the company owned a very popular and established restaurant, and in the year 2016, the organisation laid its foot in the field of cloud kitchens. Since the cloud kitchen market was not yet flourished and a lack of awareness regarding the same among people forced the company to step back and re-design the whole idea.

The determined and optimistic founders of Shero have only bounced back harder with every backlog and failure they have tasted in their lives. The setbacks they faced paved the way for designing the Shero model with much more experience and maturity.

Mr Thilak‘s logical reasoning and Ms Jayashree Thilak’s calm and composed nature are the catalysts of their successful journey.

In the year March 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 sparked the importance and need for home-cooked food, which could also be instantly delivered, thus marking the beginning of Shero home food.

Well, Shero is an emotion of humble, simple, hardworking, honest, and transparent woman with a personality whom you find next door. She can be a mother, a daughter, a sister, or a wife; she is a symbol of a family Hero. It defines the aura of every person associated with the team Shero whether it’s the employees or the kitchen partners.

The company strives to bring back the importance and goodness of home-cooked food to everyone and provide quick access to homemade food and products. They are on a mission to transform one million homes into nuclear cloud-internet business spots.

The bigger goal is to enable and empower these simple homemakers to run a commercial kitchen with the assistance of Shero Food Technology and thus providing stiff and equal competition to any restaurant or food joint.

They are missioned and instrumental in starting a food drive that was aimed to resolve two major pain points, i.e. hygienic food, which is also easily available and accessible. It was a driven initiative that would find women who are passionate about cooking and assist them in becoming financially independent, thus making every woman into their Hero.

Shero’s business is built around creating a supply ecosystem of home chefs, i.e. Kitchen partners and a demanding ecosystem of consumers. It is based on a cloud kitchen model where Shero acts as an intermediate or a platform between these two entities and maintains a holistic balance in the supply and demand graph. The team closely and continually monitors each and every order to make sure that it is systematic and standardised.

• Unrecognized and Unheard: Despite many voices and movements raised, women’s community and especially cooking is still considered a simple and underrated job. Shero is trying to build a platform to celebrate these unsung Women and provide them with the recognition they deserve, and make them financially stable. Many Kitchen partners are now the heroes of their families.

• Inconsistency: Shero is yet again the first-ever brand to ensure a standard menu and taste across all the outlets in the Home Food Sector, which is available at all times of the day. They take accountability and responsibility for every item being served under their Brand name.

• Pre-ordering: Shero Home Food is India’s first-ever and No.1 brand that broke the Pre - Ordering system in Home Food Business by making fresh and hygienic food ready in less than 10 minutes for its customers, thus creating history.

• Unorganised Market: Shero is the foremost home food brand to operate under a single brand name and is accountable for every food being cooked.

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” these are exactly the words that the founders of Shero believe in. It was not just as easy as it seemed; it involved a lot of R&D, systematic planning, teamwork, training, and most importantly, standardising and systemising the whole process.

People lacked trust and safety in the home-cooked food sector because of various loopholes like no quality assurance or standardised pricing or portions of food.

The company had to overcome various hurdles in terms of making the entire process smooth and quick, right from order booking, training kitchen partners and ensuring hygiene, quality, and taste to making it accessible to customers instantly.

Shero’s team removed the prefix from the “IM- Possible” by adapting to ABC cooking model, HTC method, continuous and constant training, and live monitoring.

Shero Food Technology has been crafted in such a way that it’s built from 15+ years of experience of the founder Ms Jayashree along with the versatile touch to adapt to the “Instant Lifestyle”. With 2.5 decades of experience, the founders innovated two new food methodologies.

One is the ABC Cooking Model, which allows Home Makers (Kitchen Partners) to cook food in less than 10 Minutes and with Zero Wastage. The second one, Shero, ensures the safety and hygiene of the customers through the HTC Standards and continuous live monitoring of every single order. H - Hygiene and Homely, T - Taste and Timely, C - Color and Consistency.

Shero is ranked as a market leader in the home food industry across the globe for its exclusive menu options wherein people can even order single items like Chutney, Sambar, etc. This results in higher AOV- Average order value helping the organisation generates more revenue.

The food prepared by the kitchen partners across all the cuisines is extremely authentic and safe without any added flavours or preservatives. It is just a simple, pure, comfortable home food that a mother prepares for her family.

The company emphasises trust building as every food is prepared with utmost love and care. Only fresh ingredients and vegetables are used, and food is safely packed in containers.

The home food-based brand Shero consists of various key products and services for its target customers. Some of the most value-adding ones are as mentioned below:

• Shero company is a top-notch successful model and is the market leader as well as a trendsetter in the Home-food industry. Their menu is unique and provides “any menu-anytime”!

• Shero has bridged that gap and made it possible for people to get access to 500+ more varieties of home food across 4 unique Indian cuisines (Chettinad, Keralite, Andhra, North Indian).

• Ensures safety, cleanliness, standardisation, and timely delivery across every order by constantly monitoring it.

• Provides complete training and quality assurance system to each member, i.e. Kitchen Partners at timely intervals.

• Fresh, tasty, and safe food is ready in less than 10 minutes and is managed with zero wastage.

• Shero team also abides by a rigorous and systematic onboarding process for each of its kitchen partners. They ensure that safety and cleanliness are not compromised in any way and perform surprise kitchen visits, conduct mystery audits, and also provide continuous and mandatory education and awareness sessions for all Kitchen Partners.

• Shero Home Food is World’s first-ever and No.1 brand that broke the Pre - Ordering system in Home Food Business. Shero Home Food is the first-ever home food Brand to be present and successfully operates on Swiggy and Zomato.

Major Milestones & Success Stories

Shero had the potential to tap the right market in the right way. Ever since its establishment, Shero company has only taken each step further and tasted more success.

• The company’s journey sprouted in 2020 and has since bloomed into a home-food revolution, as mentioned below.

• From experimenting with this model in a small kitchen in August 2020 to having opened 50 kitchens in Tamil Nadu and offering 1 cuisine.

• Taking a step further in 2022 March – they grew to 109 kitchens across 4 states- Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka in March and currently have around 503+ active kitchen partners across India. Shero has achieved a milestone and remains unstoppable.

• Shero has added many feathers to its hat and has completed around 1.9 lacs + orders across 40+ cities helping Kitchen partners make a whopping earning of around 3.9 crores+.

• Shero home food has a very strong presence in south India, with its Headquarters located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and two other offices in Hyderabad - Telangana. Calicut-Kerala. The company is aiming actively for growth and expansion pan India and the global marketplace and is soon launching its new office in Singapore.

Mr Thilak Venkatasamy is the founder and CEO of the company, and Ms Jayashree is a co-founder and CPO.

The strong pillars of the company include Mr Sajeev- The Product Manager, Ms Meena- The Operations Manager, Ms Sureka- The partner Relationship Manager and Ms Sudha, The Accounts Manager.

At present, there are 60+ other employees and 503+ active Kitchen partners. The company also has extended members and many franchisee holders, repeating benefits from the company’s growth and success.

The company has a well-outlined and mapped direction to achieve its business plan and successfully meet its short and long-term strategic goals as mentioned below:

The company strongly believe in returning to society, creating a change, and making a positive impact. The firm strongly emphasises and values teamwork, honesty, community, involvement and transparency, which are the four significant pillars of the organisation.

These ethics not only impact the company’s relationship with its partners, shareholders, kitchen partners and customers but also impacts the overall functioning of the organisation.

Team Shero nurtures and maintains a culture of equality, respect, and opportunity, especially for all the Kitchen Partners. With an honest and committed work ethic, open communication, and sheer passion, the Shero team aims to guide millions of people toward the realisation that homemade food is essential, and so are the women who make them.

The company’s revenue model looks very promising, with increasing profit in every sale. With around 30%+ average sales growth since inception, it’s estimated to achieve 100 million (INR) in FY 2023, which is the highest in India.

The average bill size is around $4.5, the highest in Indian Home food delivery platforms. They also have marked a 51.7%+ Repeat customer rate, which is by far the best in the Global Food and Beverage Industry.

“Investing puts money to work. The only reason to save money is to invest it.” – Grant Cardone. The Shero team has 2 M $ Fund Raised at Pre Series Round, and currently, the company is valued at INR 95 Cr. Adding more to this, Mr Thilak, along with his wife, Ms Jayashree, and his family, also with the other 6 Angel Investors, holds the CAP Table.

The home food sector is very dynamic, challenging, and ever-changing. The company is working on various aspects, like bringing about more authentic flavours and dishes of Indian and other global cuisines.

Another important plan that the company is trying to implement is to create a CKT- community kitchen concept in various parts of the country, i.e. more like a commercial kitchen model.

A nuclear kitchen can earn up to 1 lakh per month, and a community kitchen can bring in up to 6 lakhs per month! This concept involves 2-3 Kitchen Partners who can cook together to ensure joint success and also gain outstanding earning potential.

This commercial model will help in completing more orders with less hassle, thus taking the company revenue to a higher scale. The company envisions connecting 1 million homes on the Shero platform and projects a 129 crore INR for FY 2024.

Centered currently in South India, the team is planning to grow as the biggest player in the home food sector and soon be present in pan India and also to mark a global presence.

The team is working on multiple models, the prime one being “Shero Mart”, a re-selling business concept that is highly influenced by network marketing. Shero mart is channelised and customised to provide earning opportunities for women from the comfort of their homes.

Unlike others, Shero mart proudly hoots about its quality-assured product with zero compromises on standards. The approach behind this idea is extremely unique since women will already have a well-established network with the presence of Shero home food and can generate exorbitant revenue from various channels under the umbrella of Shero.

The company will act as an Omni channel that will allow women an opportunity to generate income through various sources.

The team is planning to step up their foot in areas like Private labelling for D2C products. Acquisition and mergers, Phygital stores, Micro financing for women, and making a contribution to various social impact projects.

Well, the wings of Shero are going to spread broader than they appear; you can soon shop on the Shero mart, resell and earn on Shero, become a leader on Shero, and also join the team and become their kitchen partner.

“Embarking a journey of multiple decades in the food and beverage industry, we as a team believe to keep innovating and creating an impact on society for good”, remarks Mr Thilak.

The accomplishment of Shero’s success has been possible through constant hard work, overcoming various challenges, and the spirit of not giving up.

This model started with the aim of exploring and filling up the gap in the home food sector by branding it and making it available all around the clock, thus bringing the revolution via Shero food technology and standardising the whole process of the home-cooked food business.

“The ultimate impact that we aim to create is to switch the coming generations to eating home food. The entire objective of Shero is to transform the lives of millions of simple homemakers into entrepreneurs and provide them with a whole new individual identity” Shero is looking to elevate the lives of more and more homemakers all across the globe.

The Shero leaders proudly quote,