Food Tech Startup Yumist Shuts Down

Yumist, a food tech company in Delhi that competed against the likes of FoodPanda and Zomato has shut shop after claiming a dead end to a high burn business model. The company provided home-cooked meals starting at just Rs. 100.

“We failed to raise the kind of capital that this business required while staying true to the customer problem. In hindsight, there’s a bunch of internal and external factors that led us to this dead end,” Yumist said in a blog post.

“From launching in a second city prematurely, or committing to a high growth, high burn model just because prospective investors wanted to see that back in 2015, or taking a tad bit too long to find the right business model, we made our mistakes. We learnt from these mistakes and recovered fast, but maybe not too fast,” it added.

“Also, every company has a context in which it operates – the economic climate, investor sentiment, the sector one operates in. Essentially, there are external factors which one can’t really control. 2016 onwards, food tech (in the manner the term is loosely used) had amassed a notoriety with investors and media and became almost a dirty word. We failed in all our attempts to fundraise since then, as investors wanted to wait it out,” the blog post read.

The company is also offering customers refund of the balance left in YumCash wallet. Customers need to fill out an online form and share account details to get the refund. The company says the refund process would take “3-5 working days / depending on your bank.”