MAM
Rajesh Sawhney taps into $300 billion food retail market with Innerchef
MUMBAI: Tapping into the lucrative $300 billion food retailing market in India, former Reliance Entertainment president and GSF Accelerator founder Rajesh Sawhney has launched InnerChef.
InnerChef is an online food discovery and delivery platform, which is at the intersection of two global mega trends: eating different and eating better. The company will deliver great recipes in a box with all its ingredients, which are measured and prepped allowing one become a chef in 10-20 minutes.
While the food retailing market in India is pegged at $300 billion, the Indian restaurant market is pegged at $50 billion. The home food delivery market is growing at 40 per cent per annum and is expected to be $10 billion in size by 2016. While bulk of the business in this industry is in the unorganized sector, the share of the organized sector is increasing rapidly. With the advent of Internet and mobile, the combination of food and technology is disrupting old business models and is creating new paradigms. According to recent estimates, over $2.3 billion has been invested in “Food+Tech” businesses so far of which $1.2 billion was in 2014 alone. Innerchef’s mission is to provide a new kitchen experience that is in sync with the needs of a “globally-aware” yet “time-poor” consumer.
The company’s chefs shop for fresh ingredients, prepare exotic sauces and seasonings, package them to precise measurement with simple recipe instructions to follow. With InneChef, one can experience the thrill of cooking and plating a dish that’s fresh and tasty within minutes.
InnerChef currently offering 16 recipes and plans to take the number up to 25-30 recipes over the next one month, which will be refreshed on a weekly basis. While the launch menu is primarily western cuisine comprising salads, paninis, pastas and specials, InnerChef plans to add oriental and Indian cuisine in the coming weeks.
While InnerChef has commenced operations in Gurgaon, it plans to expand to three metros namely Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in the coming quarter and cover the top 10 Indian cities with multiple kitchens within one year. Plans are afoot to have 100 kitchens in a span of two years.
Adopting the model of hyper local distribution, InnerChef will deliver fresh food twice in a day: lunch (11 am to 2 pm) and dinner (5 pm – 9 pm). Additionally, the company is also exploring options to provide on-demand service in the catchment areas.
Customers can order recipe boxes through a mobile responsive website and soon-to-be launched mobile app.
The four other co-founder of InnerChef along with Sawhney are DiGhent Cafe founder Bal, professional chef Heena Karia Thakkar, Skybulls founder Uday Bansal and former Barclays New York product manager Rahul Samat.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
