Umar Khalid, Anirban granted six-month interim bail

Mumbai, Jan 23: Rashmi Sahijwala never expected to start working at the age of 59, let alone join India’s gig economy—now she is part of an army of housewives turning their homes into “cloud kitchens” to feed time-starved millennials.

Asia’s third-largest economy is battling a slowdown so sharp it is creating a drag on global growth, the International Monetary Fund said Monday, but there are some bright spots.

The gig economy, aided by cheap mobile data and abundant labour, has flourished in India, opening up new markets across the vast nation.

Although Indian women have long battled for access to education and employment opportunities, the biggest hurdle for many is convincing conservative families to let them leave home.

But new apps like Curryful, Homefoodi, and Nanighar are tapping the skills of housewives to slice, dice and prepare meals for hungry urbanites from the comfort of their homes.

The so-called cloud kitchens—restaurants that have no physical presence and a delivery-only model—are rising in popularity as there is a boom in food delivery apps such as Swiggy and Zomato.

“We want to be the Uber of home-cooked food,” said Ben Mathew, who launched Curryful in 2018, convinced that housewives were a huge untapped resource.

His company—which employs five people for the app’s daily operations—works with 52 women and three men, and the 31-year-old web entrepreneur hopes to get one million female chefs on-board by 2022.

“We usually train them in processes of sanitisation, cooking, prep time and packaging... and then launch them on the platform,” Mathew told news agency.

One of the first housewives to join Curryful in November 2018 shortly after its launch, Sahijwala was initially apprehensive, despite having four decades of experience in the kitchen.

But backed by her children, including her son who gave her regular feedback about her proposed dishes, she took the plunge.

Since then, she’s undergone a crash course in how to run a business, from creating weekly menus to buying supplies from wholesale markets to cut costs.

The learning curve was steep and Sahijwala switched from cooking everything from scratch to preparing curries and batters for breads in advance to save time and limit leftovers.

She even bought a massive freezer to store fruits and vegetables despite her husband’s reservations about the cost.

“I told him that I am a professional now,” she told news agency.

‘Internet restaurants’

Kallol Banerjee, co-founder of Rebel Foods which runs 301 cloud kitchens backing up 2,200 “internet restaurants”, was among the first entrepreneurs to embrace the concept in 2012.

“We could do more brands from one kitchen and cater to different customer requirements at multiple price points,” Banerjee told AFP.

The chefs buy the ingredients, supply the cookware and pay the utility bills.

The apps—which make their money through charging commission, such as more than 18 percent per order for Curryful—offer training and supply the chefs with containers and bags to pack the food in.

Curryful chef Chand Vyas, 55, spent years trying to set up a lunch delivery business but finally gave up after failing to compete with dabbawalas, Mumbai’s famously efficient food porters.

Today Vyas works seven hours a day, five days a week in her kitchen, serving up a bevy of Indian vegetarian staples, from street food favourites to lentils and rice according to the app’s weekly set menus.

“I don’t understand marketing or how to run a business but I know how to cook. So, the current partnership helps me focus on just that while Curryful takes care of the rest,” Vyas told AFP.

She pockets up to $150 (Rs 10,000 approx) a month after accounting for the commissions and costs, but hopes to earn more as the orders increase.

In contrast, a chef at a bricks-and-mortar restaurant takes home a monthly wage of between $300 (Rs 20,000 approx) and $1,000 (Rs 70,000) approx for working six days a week.

With India’s cloud kitchen sector expected to reach $1.05 billion by 2023, according to data platform Inc42, other companies are also keen to get a slice of the action.

Swiggy, for example, has invested 2.5 billion rupees ($35.3 million) in opening 1,000 cloud kitchens across the nation.

Back in her Mumbai kitchen, Sahijwala is elated to have embarked on a career at an age when her contemporaries are eyeing retirement.

Over the past year, she has seen her profit grow to $200 (Rs 15,000 approx) a month, but more importantly, she said, “My passion has finally found an outlet.

“I am just glad life has given me this chance.”

Srinagar, Jun 9: Suspended Jammu and Kashmir DSP Davinder Singh, who was nabbed while ferrying two Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists on the Srinagar-Jammu Highway, moved a Delhi court on Tuesday seeking interim bail.

Besides Singh, two other accused -- Syed Naveed Mushtaq and Imran Shafi Mir -- have also sought bail. The Special Cell of the Delhi Police is probing their role in the alleged planning of a terror attack.

The trio has sought bail asserting that there is no evidence to show that there was any conspiracy to commit an act that would threaten the sovereignty of the country. The court has listed the matter for hearing on Wednesday.

"The accused are wrongly and falsely implicated in the case. There is also no material to substantiate that the accused had the intention or conspired to carry out a terror strike," the plea stated.

Singh is currently under judicial custody at the Hira Nagar Jail in J&K till June 16. Besides Singh, three other accused -- Javed Iqbal, Syed Naveed Mushtaq and Imran Shafi Mir -- are also under custody.

Delhi Police's Special Cell had brought him from Hira Nagar Jail to the national capital in March for interrogation in another case.

The police had earlier told the court that Mushtaq, who was the commander of Hizbul Mujahiddeen in Shopian district, along with other militants were planning to execute a terror attack in Delhi and other parts of the country and targeted killings of protected persons.

In connection with this, the Delhi Police had filed an FIR which stated that the youth of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab are being trained for carrying out terrorist activities. Singh was taken into custody under this FIR and was also interrogated regarding the Khalistan angle.

Washington, Feb 21: Days ahead of his India visit, US President Donald Trump on Thursday said the two countries could make a "tremendous" trade deal.

"We're going to India, and we may make a tremendous deal there," Trump said in his commencement address at the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony in Las Vegas.

Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, is scheduled to travel to Ahmedabad, Agra and New Delhi on February 24 and 25.

Ahead of the visit, there have been talks about India and the United States agreeing on a trade package as a precursor to a major trade deal.

During his commencement address, Trump indicated that the talks on this might slowdown if he did not get a good deal.

"Maybe we'll slow down. We'll do it after the election. I think that could happen too. So, we'll see what happens," he said.

"But we're only making deals if they're good deals because we're putting America first. Whether people like it or not, we're putting America first," Trump said.

Bilateral India-US trade in goods and services is about three per cent of the US' world trade.

In a recent report, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said the trading relationship is more consequential for India -- in 2018 the United States was its second largest goods export market (16.0 per cent share) after the European Union (EU, 17.8 per cent), and third largest goods import supplier (6.3 per cent) after China (14.6 per cent) and the EU 28 (10.2 per cent).

"The Trump Administration takes issue with the US trade deficit with India, and has criticised India for a range of 'unfair' trading practices," the CRS said.

"Indian Prime Minister Modi's first term fell short of many observers' expectations, as India did not move forward with anticipated market opening reforms, and instead increased tariffs and trade restrictions," it said.

"Modi's strong electoral mandate may embolden the Indian government to press ahead with its reform agenda with greater vigour. Slowing economic growth in India raises concerns about its business environment," CRS said.

As per a fact sheet issued by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), trade in goods and services between the two countries from 1999 to 2018 surged from $16 billion to $142 billion.

India is now the United States' eighth-largest trading partner in goods and services and is among the world's largest economies.

India's trade with the United States now resembles, in terms of volume, the US' trade with South Korea ($167 billion in 2018) or France ($129 billion), said Alyssa Ayres from CFR.

"The United States for two years now has set out in stone pretty clearly the things that they wanted to see to try to get an agreement, and it's basically then on India's doorstep on whether they want to take those steps," Rick Rossow, Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank told reporters during a conference call.

"The list of US asks has been pretty static all throughout. Not to say that any of these things are easy for India to do, but the United States to my knowledge didn't change the goalposts just because we now consider India to be a middle-income country. The things that we wanted to see happen to get this trade agreement have been pretty static all throughout, no matter how difficult they are," he said in response to a question.