Now, select online what you want to gorge in your 'dabba' service

Pratik Jain, 25, extends an apology for making me wait on a scalding-hot day outside a building at Andheri which I presume houses his ‘office’.

Come fifth floor, he ushers me into his vintage bachelor pad with clothes strewn about, an unmade bed and a pack of savouries next to a TV, but oozing comfort only a twenty-something stag can understand. His room doubles up as his workplace, evidence, however tenuous, of which are a laptop, printer and a lone table.

His six-month-old firm Yummy Tiffins is run from here. “Because I work from home I take it easy and I am on Facebook often. I have to respond to some enquiries,” Jain says with a guilty chuckle.

The start-up, which serves only vegetarian food and has its kitchen opposite Jain’s coop, differs from its competitors in that it offers you menus for six days of the week to choose from on its website (www.yummytiffins.com), just so you don’t have to make a face when you open your dabba for lunch.

“You can fix your menu for ten days or even a month and you can also modify or cancel it before 6 pm for the next day. All this can be done only through technology,” says Jain, a Navi Mumbai boy armed with an MBA and a three-month stint at HDFC Bank.

“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur so I quit my job to start this firm,” he notes. When his idea made it to the top 1,000 out of 16,000 applications in a business plan competition, Jain got the much-needed push to bring his idea to life. He got a city-based caterer & a computer programmer from Pune on board, tied up with dabbawalas and voila, Yummy Tiffins was up and about.
“I didn’t need a lot of capital to begin with. I had some money saved up and I borrowed from my family,” says Jain. The company hopes to break even in a few months.

Yummy Tiffins presently has 170-180 customers and hopes to reach the 1,000 mark in a year. Jain plans to have an office and a bigger kitchen soon to meet the growing demand for his service.

“We are already getting enquiries from Bangalore and Pune and I will look at them after a year since I am just learning the process,” quips Jain.

Though it’s very likely that Jain’s idea will be replicated by other organised tiffin service providers, Jain maintains what’s critical for Yummy Tiffins is to maintain the quality of its food. Among its offerings is the fad in vogue—diet food. While most of Yummy Tiffins’ peers send food in the traditional steel containers, Jain has opted for disposable plastic containers to live up to his firm’s objective to provide healthy, tasty food at a reasonable price.

Yummy Tiffins has a vast market to tap in Mumbai, but Jain wants to move on. He says, “In 4-5 months I want my company to operate without my managerial assistance and I want to do something else, maybe study or come up with a new business idea.” Jain currently deals with customers himself. “I don’t oversee the kitchen activities as much as I used to,” he adds. While the caterer procures the needful post 6 pm for the following day’s food, the cooking begins at 4 am. “I am in the kitchen these days by 9 and the dabbas have to be packed by 10, then I start answering mails & calls, etc. I work through the day,” he says. Lest you think he is a workaholic who needs to be weaned off his job, Jain confesses to leaving home everyday at 9 pm to kick back with his pals and returning home not before midnight.