The dark kitchen adds another color to the sharing economy.

According to foreign media, VCCircle It is reported that India ’s Kitchens Centre raised $ 500,000 in seed funding, by AngelList India led the investment, with AngelList India partners Utsav Somani and Jake Zeller, Thumbtack co-founder Jonathon Swanson, Junglee Games founder Ankush Gera, and Mosaic Wellness founder Revant Bhate participating. In this round of financing, the company will use to improve the delivery platform and promote the expansion of the business into new regions.

Kitchens Centre is a company that provides cloud kitchens. It was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in New Delhi, India. Founded by Lakshay Jain, it aims to provide compliant kitchen infrastructure for take-out restaurants and provide marketing, A series of services such as order management and facility management .

Kitchens Centre provides shared kitchens for take-out restaurants, from which the platform will collect certain rents, management fees and sales commissions. Not long ago, Kitchens Centre also acquired Posify, a company that provides technology-driven management for restaurant brands. Lakshay Jain stated that Posify ’s technology-driven management is consistent with Kitchens Centre, which can help brand owners manage orders on the platform, perform inventory management, billing, and delivery tracking.

Kitchens Centre can not only help takeaway restaurants to reduce operating expenses, but also the CRM system and order management platform provided by the platform can help brands to provide an average sales growth of 25%. So far, brands that have settled on the platform include BTW, WOW! Momo, Asian Haus, Burgrill, 34 Chowringhee Lane, Wok Me, POMP, Beijing Street, etc.

According to the data from DataLabs by Inc42, the average annual cost of opening a restaurant in India is about three times that of cloud kitchen. At the same time, it is predicted that the market size of cloud kitchen will reach 1.05 billion US dollars by 2023. Indian takeaway companies Zomato and Swiggy are also entering cloud kitchen market, competing with companies such as Rebel Foods, Box8, Freshmenu and Eat.fit

Cloud Kitchen version of

Kitchens Centre official website

The continuous rise of the cloud kitchen

The cloud kitchen can be called Wework in the catering industry, which has opened up a world for takeaway restaurants. The traditional restaurant model is outdated, the burden is too heavy, the rent is high, and the salaries of dishwashing workers, chefs, and waiters must be paid. But with Cloud Kitchen, restaurant owners can share facilities with others, which can reduce operating costs such as store rent, chef and service staff salaries.

In London, UK, many companies do not want to open employee cafeterias, and they order group meals on takeaway apps such as Deliveroo. The takeaway restaurant on the platform also chooses to rent the “takeaway kitchen” FoodStars to cook food. This company has more than 100 takeaway kitchens, and merchants only need to pay a monthly rent of £ 2500 to use.

But then, FoodStars was acquired by the shared kitchen CloudKitchens . CloudKitchens was founded by Uber ’s former CEO Travis Kalanick, and received $ 400 million in financing from Saudi Arabia ’s sovereign wealth fund in 2019, which valued the company at about $ 5 billion. In addition, Kalanick also invested in Indian Cloud Kitchen Rebel Foods .

Previously, it also reported that the US takeaway platform Hungry , Consumers can book the food prepared by local independent chefs on the platform and deliver them directly to home. In this process, the chef makes use of what is called “Ghost Kitchen” in the United States, which is the concept of shared kitchen. The chef only needs to be stationed in Hungry and is responsible for making food, while customer acquisition, delivery and consumer services are handled by Hungry.

Represented by Panda Star Kitchen , Shiyunji, Huang Xiaodi and Jiqi Alliance , the shared kitchen model is in China It is basically mature.