Meet the duo giving unsold food a second life across Bengaluru and Hyderabad

A few months ago, on a visit to India, Karan Singh Gujral noticed a bakery owner trashing large stocks of his products at the end of a working day. “They were ideal to consume but wouldn’t be fresh the next day,” says Karan, 28, who was working as a founder associate at an AI-led EdTech Platform in France. “I realised that buying food from a bakery or a restaurant at closing time was something people did regularly in France. Nobody treats it as charity or as a discount. It’s routine.” Read more | This app is dropping curated mystery bags from your favourite cafes in Bengaluru Aditya Arya and Karan Singh Gujral | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement When Karan came back to India, he and his friend Aditya Arya (former founder associate at a biotech company in Hyderabad) kept seeing the same thing every night: bakery counters still full at 9 pm and all of it in a bin by 10 pm. “That’s what got us. It wasn’t spoiled or unsafe food; it was good food that simply hadn’t sold. We throw away an enormous amount of it in a country where that should be unthinkable. Nobody had built the thing that sits between those two facts here. So we did,” says Karan, co-founder and CEO of Replate, a recently-launched initiative that connects customers with restaurants and bakeries across Bengaluru and Hyderabad via a surprise bag model. A snapshot a surprise bag | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Explaining the process, Aditya, 26, co-founder and CTO, says the process takes a minute for the restaurant partner. “Before closing, the outlet opens the partner app and enters how many bags they have, and these go live on our app right away. Customers nearby book and pay in advance, and each one gets a code and a collection window, usually the last hour before the shop shuts,” he says, adding that the contents of the bags are not disclosed in advance but the products “need to be worth roughly three times what the customer paid”. “The customer walks in during the window, shows the code, and takes the bag. We settle the money into the outlet’s account on a weekly basis. No delivery, no collection by us, no inventory sitting anywhere,” says Aditya. Before closing, the outlet opens the partner app and enters how many bags they have, and these go live on our app right away | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Till date, the duo have sold approximately 2,500 bags across their 50 restaurant/bakery partners such as Bikanervala, Hole in the Wall Cafe, Beanlore, etc. across Bengaluru and Hyderabad. “45% of those customers have bought more than once, which is the number we pay the most attention to. Our buyers are mostly students and young working professionals. Some come for the price, but a lot of them are here because the food waste bothers them, and they tell us that unprompted,” says Karan.While the process currently runs on their app and Whatsapp, it initially started with a WhatsApp group. “The question we actually needed answered was whether anyone in India would pay for a bag of unsold food without being told what was in it. We signed a handful of bakeries, made a group, and ran the whole thing by hand,” says Karan, “Every evening, a partner would message us how many bags they had. We’d post the drop in the group with the price and the pickup window. People clicked on the link to claim one, paid over UPI, and collected it with a code.” The duo did this manually every night before building two apps: for the restaurant partner and the consumer respectively. Customers nearby book and pay in advance, and each one gets a code and a collection window, usually the last hour before the shop shuts | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Given that food is sent out at the end of the day, how do they ensure quality control? “The food in a bag is the same food the outlet was selling at full price that same day. It’s surplus, not leftovers, and that distinction is the whole business,” affirms Aditya, adding that every partner holds a valid FSSAI licence. “Our partner agreement requires that everything in a bag is within its safe consumption window, that nothing previously served or returned ever goes in, and that it meets the same standard as what they sell at the counter. Every order is traceable to a specific outlet, customer and time, so if there is ever an issue we can identify exactly who is affected within minutes,” he adds. Till date, the duo have sold approximately 2,500 bags across their 50 restaurant/bakery partners | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement A surprise goodie bag is enticing, no doubt, but I ask Karan if they explored the idea of giving away the food or donating it to a food bank rather than monetise it. “Yes, seriously, and we decided against it as the core model,” he says. “Donation runs on goodwill, and goodwill is the first thing to go when someone is tired or short staffed. We’ve seen it with outlets who tried it. It works for a few weeks and then quietly stops. A small payment changes that completely. The outlet recovers something on food it was writing off, so it becomes a commercial decision rather than a favour, and commercial decisions get repeated every night. That’s the only way this reaches any kind of scale,” says Karan who believes there are organisations “doing genuine redistribution in India and doing it well”. “We’re not competing with them. We’re solving a different part of the problem, the food that was never going to reach them in the first place,” he says. Every partner holds a valid FSSAI licence | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement In the coming months, the duo are focussed on “depth before width”. “We want Hyderabad and Bengaluru dense enough that most people have a bag within walking distance of their home, and we will then look at Mumbai,” says Aditya, adding that there is more work to be done on the restaurant’s side. “Right now an outlet is guessing how much surplus it will have. We want to be able to tell them, based on their own history, so they list earlier and more consistently. That’s where the real unlock is,” he concludes. Replate is available on iOS and Android