About Zuby

Zuby is a searchable directory of verified home chefs and tiffin services. Think of it as a way to find the people already cooking brilliant food near you — and to contact them directly, without an app, an account or a commission in between.

Why it exists

Home-cooked food in Indian cities is enormous and almost entirely invisible. There are tens of thousands of home cooks — mostly women, often exceptional — running small businesses out of their kitchens. Their customers find them through apartment WhatsApp groups, Instagram DMs and notices in lift lobbies. The food is there. The way to find it isn't.

The existing platforms solved this by becoming full marketplaces: they take the order, hold the payment, arrange the delivery, and charge 20 to 35 percent for it. That works, but it asks a cook to give up a quarter of her income before she has any reason to trust the platform. Most stay invisible instead.

Zuby's bet is that you don't need to own the transaction to fix the discovery problem. A directory with real location search, real verification and a friction-free way to reach the cook is valuable on its own.

How it works

You search by where you are and what you want. Results are filtered by actual distance — and by each chef's own delivery radius, so a cook who serves 5 km won't show up if you're 8 km away. You can filter by cuisine and by dietary requirement: pure veg, halal, jhatka, jain, egg-free.

When you find someone, you tap the WhatsApp button. It opens a chat with that cook, with a short message already written. You work out what you want, when, and how you'll pay — directly with them. Zuby doesn't take the order, hold the money or arrange delivery.

What it costs

Nothing, to anyone. Chefs pay no commission and no listing fee. Buyers pay the chef directly. Zuby makes no money on any order placed through it today. If that changes, it will change by adding something optional that chefs choose to pay for — not by taking a cut of what they already earn.

Where it runs

Bangalore first, and properly, before anywhere else. Zuby is built to handle multiple cities and countries — prices carry currency codes, cities and countries are real entities in the database, and the regulatory fields cover more than one jurisdiction — but a directory with thin coverage is worse than no directory. We open a new city when there are enough kitchens in it to be genuinely useful.