Nosh promises to cook almost all Indian dishes. (Source: Euphotic Labs)

How many times have you wished for helping hands that could prepare your favourite dishes without you lifting a finger? A family member or a house help can do only so much, but leveraging technology can go beyond the call of duty, as discovered by Yatin Varachhia, Euphotic founder. When he, along with his wife, moved to Bengaluru for their respective jobs, they switched five cooks who could cater to their tastes but to no avail.

This, coupled with huge workload, long commutes and time and effort involved in cooking triggered the idea of automating the process and led to the birth of an automatic cooking robot – Nosh. Claimed to be “world’s smartest automated cooking machine”, Nosh prepares one’s desired dish at the touch of a button. So you could be relaxing on your couch, while the machine prepares your favourite dish. In an exclusive interaction with indianexpress.com, Smit Shah, head of business development and operations, Euphotic Labs Pvt Ltd, explains the concept and how automation in food is the need of the hour.

Can you explain more about the concept?

We have the vision to uplift the quality of life by making sure that everyone can have those breakfasts and dinners they may miss due to their busy work routines, while also allowing them to spend quality time with the family. We have an IoT-based (Internet of Things) recipe-sharing platform, that will enable users to cook a variety of dishes from different parts of the world.

The cooking food robot’s recipe database keeps updating. (Source: Euphotic Labs)

How does the robot work?

Nosh can cook a variety of dishes custom designed to your taste. A few of these include Upma, Poha, Suji ka Halwa, Kadai Paneer, Mushroom Masala, Pasta, Khichdi, Fried Rice, and many more.

Our food robot Nosh cooks through the following steps:

*Select your favourite dish from the app.

*Load the raw ingredients as directed into the tray.

*Load the tray into Nosh and command it to cook.

*Catch up with that unfinished office work or watch Netflix and chill, while your meal is being prepared.

How is it different from other automatic machines that make food?

All our competitors are in the prototype stage currently, and no device as such can solve the problem effectively and adapt to household needs.

In case there is no wi-fi connectivity or it is intermittent, will the technology still work?

Yes, the device comes with a display. You can select the dish from the display using our one-way interface and command it to . All the recipes that you have prepared previously are available offline. Since the recipe database keeps on updating, one can download all the new recipes through the app, while having all the previously cooked recipes already stored on the device.

It is considered that automation of food tends to lack the authentic taste of ‘ghar ka khaana’. Your thoughts?

That’s not true! With Nosh, we assure that if we provide the same dish cooked by a person and the robot, you will not be able to differentiate. This is possible because we have gone deep into the art of cooking and understood the science behind each technique. We have developed a recipe engine that incorporates human judgements of cooking, i.e you can specify steps like cook the onion till translucent/grey/fully caramelised, cook tomato till soft/mushy/caramelised, etc. We have developed a unique vision algorithm that processes what happens in the pan and makes decisions on the next steps. A lot of food science has gone into it to make sure the taste is just like your ‘ghar ka khaana’.

One only needs to load the raw ingredients into the tray. (Source: Euphotic Labs)

How has the pandemic opened up possibilities for automation in food?

We are seeing that COVID is acting as a trigger to adopt to the . Our customers are going through a behavioural change. People understand the importance of hygiene while managing the food without external help. With our device, they can maintain hygiene and also a contact-free lifestyle. People who have been eating out now realise the health benefits of home-cooked food, alongside the struggle of working from home along with trying to do chores.

People are looking for solutions that can help solve their daily food problems, while also providing healthy food. With Nosh, we provide the convenience of cooking healthy food at home and enable users to cook a wide variety of dishes autonomously.

When can consumers try Nosh?

We are starting the demos and user trials from July 2020. We will be launching with invitation-based pre-orders from August, 2020.

For more information, users can write to hello@euphotic.io