First there was home deliveryfood was a call away. Now its sweets,just a click away First there was home deliveryfood was a call away. Now its sweets,and they are just a click away. A new website,www.mithaimate.com,is tempting your sweet tooth by offering to deliver sweet delicacies at your doorstep anywhere in Delhi,Mumbai and Bangalore,in less than 24 hours. The sweets are guaranteed to be fresh,in hygienic packaging,from well-known shops in the three cities. Akhilesh Bali,the 23-year-old co-founder of Mithai Mate,bites into a ras malai while explaining the concept behind the website. A graduate in information technology from KJ Somaiya College,Mumbai,Bali was never keen on settling into a nine-to-five job. I knew from the start that I did not want an administrative job friends. So I saw the potential of launching a website. And since I loved sweets,I thought why not begin a delivery service, he says. The idea seemed simple enough but people asked Bali why someone would order sweets online when they could just walk down to a sweet shop. However,Bali,who possesses good business sensein college he sold customised T-shirts on the campus and made Rs 2-3 lakh in a yearsaw that the website could also cater to customers who lived far away and wanted to send sweets to their loved ones on special occasions. Rallying support from his friends and classmates Rachit Mehra,Shashank Agarwal and Ashutosh Dixit,Bali launched the venture,with the initial aim of delivery operations in three cities. While Bali and Mehrawho is not too fond of sweets but is confident of the conceptmanage the Delhi operations,the other two are stationed in Mumbai and Bangalore. Then began the task of searching for branded sweet makers who would be ready to supply sweets on demand. After three weeks and dozens of refusals,they settled on Nathu Sweets in Delhi,Punjabi Ghasitaram Halwai in Mumbai and Anand Sweets in Bangalore. The young partners pooled in Rs 25,000 to set up the website. The website design itself didnt cost them muchthey got a graphic designer they met at Andheri Station to design the website logo and a promotional tool that would run on Facebook. Orders started pouring in and we have been managing eight orders a day since January, says Mehra,22,who has employed one person in each of the three cities to deliver the sweets. At times we have personally delivered sweets, he laughs. The site has got orders from NRIs in Chicago and Europe. The website sells the sweets at 10-15 per cent higher than the MRP to cover the logistics and in turn,the sweet shop owner is promised a wider customer base. With business slowly picking up,the young entrepreneurs plan to diversify into related products like cookies and cakes. But their first priority is to find new vendors. We are in discussions with other sweet shops to offer a wider variety of sweets to our customers, he says. Now that is a mouth-watering thought.
