Recipe for a community

A shared passion for food has led to a rapidly growing online video community that will have you licking your lips.

Take four professionally qualified friends, add a dash of passion for food and you get a social networking venture that promises to be a one-stop shop for self-confessed foodies.

Nitin Agarwal, Sharib Khan, Alok Ranjan and Sumeet Anand shared a common passion for food and in their enthusiasm to find a virtual platform where they could share favourite recipes, neighbourhood restaurants, chefs and their delicacies, regional cuisines and keep abreast with "what's cooking and where", the friends decided to launch an online interactive video community called iFood.tv (www.iFood.tv).

Ranjan, who thinks static text or simple food images (found in plenty) on any food blog are a passe, says, "People now prefer a visual and interactive platform to socialise, connect and learn. iFood.tv is our endeavor to offer food-related entertainment, information and education through a blend of new media like videos and blogs and to build a p2f (person to food) networked community".

Khan, a practicing doctor, now works full-time on the venture while Ranjan and Anand, both IT professionals working with top IT companies, work on the project part-time. Twice a week, Agarwal, himself an MBA graduate who also oversees a market research venture, holds a web conference with his business buddies and together the young entrepreneurs discuss their baby, iFood.tv.

Not your usual networking site where one finds "friendships", iFood.tv is a foodies' networking hub where one can interact with a professional chef or just another food enthusiast who wants to know about the nearest Italian pizza parlour or an Indian diner. Chef Hari, a well-known name in New York's eating circles, is a regular on iFood.tv. His videos, where he shares his recipes and ideas about food, already have a cult following on the site.

Says Agarwal, " When Chef Hari joined the site, he already had some video content that had him dishing up his favourite recipes, and people loved it." Two months after the site was launched, the promoters are now planning to launch an online channel that would have professionals like Chef Hari sharing exclusive recipes on iFood.tv.

Interestingly, the site has food lovers sharing recipes over videos that range from making a good cup of masala chai to poha. One need not be a professional to upload a video claim the promoters. iFood.tv has a whole gang of housewives and amateurs who talk freely on kitchen tricks that promise to make meat tastier without making it extra soft, on different ways to bake cake/bread, and not-so-flattering blogs about the restaurant next door that barters undercooked and spicy Chinese food as authentic cuisine.

Operating with a 16-member team, iFood.tv boasts of video producers who actively compile food events, restaurant listings and also shoot food tours, humorous cooking shows or interviews. In its Chefs-at-home section, names like Shakti (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comwww.ifood.tv/shakti) or Maria (http://www.ifood.tv/lovetocookalot) and Melissa (http://www.ifood.tv/melissa) seem to be quite popular on this online community. The recipes might not be an eye-opener for many but they stick to basics that could be a welcome change. Professional chefs like Chef John (http://www.ifood.tv/food_wishes), Hari (http://www.ifood.tv/hari) and Vikas (http://www.ifood.tv/vikas_khanna) shoulder the responsibility of sharing some innovative and sumptuous looking cuisines.

One of the most popular networking groups with active food participants remains the one moderated by chefs like Hari, John, and a bunch of food and diet professionals based in the US and UK. "We have Indian patronage, but presently the bulk of our users are either NRIs or professionals who have come overseas on work," shares Agarwal.

No wonder the site has video after video talking about "scraping together a basic Indian meal, with round rotis" and "how to make yellow tadka dal". Indian food shows seems to be another high point of this social networking portal. The site highlights and regularly updates its users on the local US-based food festivals and Indian cookery shows, encouraging people to share their opinion on the same.

While not exactly minting money for Future Today Inc, the founding company of iFood.tv, the site that began humbly with an initial investment of just $2,000 is now looking for venture capitalists to bail itself out for further developments.

"iFood.tv will produce videos that will encourage food and spice companies to place their products within the clip, and thereby promoting a product," says Agarwal, while elucidating on the various revenue models that the site is betting on. Already the site gets close to 5 million hits every month, with most of the traffic coming from the US, India, Canada and UK, and has raked in close to 5,000 registered food lovers.