If you think the city goes into a slumber after 9pm then it is time for update.
Four engineering students in their third year decided to cater to midnight hunger and came up with a night food delivery business.
MidNight Hunt, the first of its kind in Shillong, is a modest venture that started around a month ago. The delivery time starts from 8pm and goes on till 5am.
“The idea came from bitter experience. We would not get food after 9-9.30pm and so decided to have a night delivery,” said Nikita Kanodia, one of the partners in the business venture, who is from Delhi and is studying BTech at UTM, Shillong.
Nikita says MidNight is part of a college project in the third year and hence is a small venture. The four students put in their pocket money as seed finance and only manages to break even “because we get less orders and mostly from students like us who are staying alone in the city”.
It is a challenging venture, especially in Shillong where there is practically no night life. “Also, it is challenging in winter and delivering the food hot is really difficult,” says Suryamohan Sumanta, who is from Goa.
The youngsters know grocery shops and meat sellers who are open till late in the night and getting raw materials “in case of an emergency is not a problem”, says Nikita. Suryamohan, who does most of the cooking and also delivers the orders, says initially the team planned to source food from restaurants but “nothing is open in Shillong after 9pm”. So they decided to put up their own menu, which is humble but enough to satiate hunger.
The other two partners, Saurav Singh from Uttarakhand and Ashutosh Khadwe from Maharashtra, help in other logistics.
Talking about the challenges, Suryamohan says the month-old venture is still struggling for fund and that is delaying improvement in service. “There are some glitches like we need more people to cook and deliver. Also, serving hot food is a challenge. But not many people know about us and orders are not too many. So investment becomes sluggish,” explains Suryamohan and says they get around four to five orders every night.
Owing to less number of orders, the team never keeps food ready and cooks only when they get a customer. “This way the delivery time also increases. That is another thing that we need to take care of,” says Suryamohan.
But the young entrepreneurs are determined to turn around by augmenting all the resources they have and “if the venture becomes a success, we will continue this”.
Nikita says some of their friends and young customers have given good reviews and the team is using social media like Facebook and Instagram to advertise. They have also put up posters in some localities in the city. “Word of mouth is also helping us,” she adds.
But all the four are aware that it won’t be long to face competition in the market and that they have to pull up their socks. This is one reason that MidNight Hunt will soon introduce special service for birthday cakes and gifts for midnight celebrations. ~ NM
