Mughlai chicken à la robot

These entrepreneurs are redefining our culinary future, bot by bot

- SNEHA BHURA

Cohan Sujay Carlos knows that many home robotics companies in India have gone bust. “Most investors and venture capitalists do not want to go there. And they are afraid of China, who will always beat us to it,” says Carlos, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur, who was a machine learning researcher at Microsoft. Since 2017, he has been trying to develop the most efficient and cheapest cooking robot through his company, Mechanical Chef. Five iterations later, he has finally arrived at a single-burner cooking machine that cost him Rs1 lakh to build. It was only in 2020 that investors started sending feelers. And even though Mechanical Chef continues to be self-funded, Carlos took the plunge this year and formally launched his cooking bot.

“Indian food is very special. It lends itself to automation in a way no other food can,” says Carlos. “It is rich in spices and the items do not require much shaping. All masalas are powders; you can deal with that in machines.” Mechanical Chef works like a tape recorder for food in the way that it precisely copies cooking steps, timing and portions of ingredients. So far, Carlos has recorded and transcribed 150 dishes into the bot. “Human history has gone through the industrial revolution and then the IT revolution. How much of it has percolated into our kitchens?” he asks.