Nothing tops homemade meals.

So when Kalpna Sharma moved to Bengaluru for a job and was frequently feeling sick from eating out for almost every meal, she started Alikemom to recreate the home-cooked meal experience. Started in 2017, Alikemom is a platform that provides quality homemade food, with a distributed kitchen model where fresh food is prepared in hygienic conditions.

“Whenever we order food, we are unaware about the surroundings and the oil in which it is cooked,” says Kalpna. “We’re only concerned about the taste and quantity, and not the quality of food.”

To help run the platform, Kalpna uses the WhatsApp Business app to take orders and receive continuous customer feedback. They use the Status feature to showcase special menus and offers.

“We’ve been able to provide a more personal touch to conversations,” she adds.

Being a bootstrapped business, Alikemom can’t spend too much on marketing and WhatsApp helps them here. When they started, they were handling just 2-3 orders a week. Today, they handle 400, with 70 percent being repeat customers. They have also seen a growth of 20 to 25 percent in overall revenue. And Alikemom is having a positive impact in other ways too.

“We’ve been able to provide a more personal touch to conversations”

“One of our customers loved the food quality and believed in the vision so much that he joined our team,” says Kalpna.

But at its core, Alikemom is about creating tasty, homestyle cuisine.

“The only additive that goes into our scrumptious plate of food is love,” says Kalpna, “something even your mom would approve of.”