Reimagining Indian Culinary Heritage Through a Digital Lens

Context

Food in India is a religion, from sun-up to sundown. Every third person is a foodie - either already or a work in progress. Our waking lives are spent discovering India's length and breadth in its culinary arts and crafts.

As a country the diversity in our cuisines, micro-cuisines, and influences across regions is mind boggling. And there are reasons for it. Neighbouring states influenced food. Colonists influenced food. Trading influenced food. Community practices and traditions influenced food. And the home chefs across billions of homes made and remade their food in their kitchens.

Dining in India has been around communities, terroirs, seasons, local ingredients, cultural factors. If there is one geography that presents the most complex and heterogeneous dining across each and every one of its cities, districts, and villages, it is India. Temple cuisine, Farm cuisine, Royal recipes, Aristocratic dining, Jungle meals, Satvik dining….the list simply goes on. Much to the delight of generations of food lovers.

A play of ingredients, artful cooking, methods of cooking that vary across the subcontinent and khansamas, aachis, bawarchis, chefs and especially our own moms, aunts and neighbours who have stirred up magic - this world is first and foremost experiential and a hallmark of our culture.

Challenges - But…times, they were changing

Time - The paucity of time, expectations of “instant gratification”, and a fast world of sometimes mindless consumption stood at cross purposes to what actual cooking craft was.

Makers - The real makers / home chefs are a very special tribe and this community needed to be preserved and sustained - else this craft and heritage would have disappeared.

Access and collection - How could we collect unique recipes and dishes from all over? How would one ascertain that they are recipes of actual dishes and food being cooked?

Inspired storytelling - How could we ensure that we kept inspiring successive generations with our food heritage and recipes?

Trouble? What participants were asked to hack and solve

How could they imagine, conceptualise, and design a unique recipe platform that was inspiring, educative, and equally productive for home chefs or families with great recipes?

How would they envision a platform that helped collect, present, and share authentic cuisines, makers, and recipes from each and every region and micro-region of India, including homes? What would have motivated their mom/aunt or cousins to bring their recipes there?

What features would their platform have? What would have been their order of priority?

Their work/solutions were to cover the following:

What was their story and narrative about?
Their food and recipe platform needed to be presented visually and digitally with mocks. Ideally, a slide on the site map was expected.
A website mock was required, with three pages, including one that was the home/landing page design (this was a must). It was upto them if they wanted to have innovation pages.
It had to be properly branded and designed. This helped us understand their design and navigation logic.

Brand design - Identity, logo, style, mnemonic, if any.
The platform needed to highlight the key features (not more than 3-4).
How would they have presented and marketed these features to get people to board and engage? They were expected to think about how they could have gotten their own homes interested. (How would they have kept marketing investments lean and yet productive?)