Good evening everyone I'm multimedia
journalist
Tori Singer based here in New York
there's a tech startup called
Khal.com it focuses on cooking and it
claims to disrupt how people will show
off their cooking skills
the company was launched just a few
months back it already
has the dean of the best culinary
institute in New York as their Chief
Culinary Officer
the editor of Ink magazine as their CMO
and the CFO
of McCann New York as their CFO and the
VP of marketing of time
Inc in their team so is it the next big
thing joining me
to talk about the growing company is
founder and CEO
Samir Tendukar to talk about it Samir
thanks for being with us
thanks for having me so talk to me a
little bit about
Khal.com what do you guys do so Khal
is a cooking platform where users can
sign up and show their show their
cooking skills
for example imagine that you are a
culinary student or you're a chef who's
applying to
to a restaurant now imagine there are
five other people who have applied for
the same job
now all the other people what they have
is they've given their paper resumes
and they've written that now written
down the names of the recipes that they
can cook
as opposed to them supposing if you
give them your Khal.com profile
then all of a sudden you know they can
see all the recipes that you can cook
they can see your style of cooking they
can see how many followers you have how
many culinary badges you have
and all of a sudden you kind of stand
out from the crowd
now this is just in the professional way
now imagine
on the other end imagine you are
on a dating site now it is really
difficult for guys on a dating site
so imagine a guy says he loves to cook
as opposed to just saying he loves to
cook
if he adds his Khal.com profile in there
and the person who's checking his
profile they can actually see all the
recipes that this guy has made
and who doesn't like a partner who can
cook good right so Khal is good for
professional
and for social as well
okay so it's kind of like a LinkedIn for
people who cook but it's also social too
well yeah you can call it the LinkedIn
of this actually the slogan of our
thing that we are the LinkedIn for
people who cook but you know it is a
LinkedIn but it's way more interesting
I can see that and probably more
delicious too
yeah so you you don't really have to
have any
professional or rather you don't have
any professional cooking background so
what made you choose cooking what was
the pull for you
so you know I actually saw that you
know people like my dad cooks really
well
he and I have this thing you know
people who cook good
they have this urge to show off their
cooking skills if you're
like you'll see grandmothers or 
anybody who cooks really good
they want to have people over to show
their cooking skills
and in fact you know there's a thing
that I found there are astronauts who
actually show their cooking skills
so people who cook they love I've seen I
was like watching
recently watching videos of cooking in
space where people are cooking in space
so if you love to cook you want to show
off your cooking skills
and unfortunately there is no platform
which is just dedicated to show your
cooking skills
and then I found that you know there is
a big need for this and that's how I
went ahead and just made this whole
thing
that's awesome especially now when we
can't all be physically together it's
really nice to have this platform and
i did see a lot of really interesting
recipes
on your site so where are your users
from tell me about that
so most of our users are from the
United States,
However you know we have users from all
over the world we have a big
we have a lot of users from India from
Egypt from
UK from France from Spain Saudi Arabia
Nigeria Australia
so we've got people from all over the
world so yeah you can see actually
recipes from all over the world on
Khal.com
so exciting and a great opportunity to
try new recipes
and I know from experience right a lot
of people
add their cooking photos and their
videos on Facebook or
Instagram and there are so many other
sites
out there for users to choose from to
find their recipes so what really makes
Khal different so that's actually a good
question in fact that is one of the
reasons why actually we made Khal.com
now if you see like the about two
examples that i gave you like a chef
applying to a restaurant
job now imagine instead of Khal.com
he gave his Facebook profile now when he
gives a Facebook profile to his
employer now the Facebook profile the
the employer can actually see pictures
of him drinking with his friends
they can see pictures of him or her on
the beach and all of a sudden it's not
just a cooking thing you know it's like
all your life is getting mixed or else
you just sit and delete all the pictures
your social life which you don't want to
do so Khal.com is just dedicated for
cooking so either it be
on your dating site on your social life
or in your professional life
Khal is just a cooking it's just
completely dedicated for cooking so
so that's how we we are different from
Instagram and Facebook
I can see that that sounds really
innovative so
how do you guys plan to be profitable
are you planning on making money through
advertising or what's your plan
so for the first two years at
least we don't
have um i mean we are not planning to
get any substantial revenue in the
company for the first two years
the main focus of this company is to
grow like we plan to have
at least a million users in the next
12 months
so yeah we are as of right now the
focus is mainly on growth
but in the future maybe we'll have
we'll charge people for
posting um for posting job
advertisements for for
posting jobs for advertisements but
right now the focus is primarily on
growth and getting you
growing our user base really exciting
stuff thank you and
I have to ask you one last question
so where do you really see yourselves
in five years from now where do you see
this company going
oh like I said like you know five years
is a long time and you know like no one
actually no one expected corona to come
by I'm sure
all the people who had corona I think
corona ruined a lot of people's
five-year plans
but like immediately for the next
12 months our goal is to have more
than
a million users on our site and then
in the next five years we plan
to be the go-to site if there's anyone
who loves to cook and take pictures
they I want them to be on Khal.com so I
want this to be like
really really huge it sounds so exciting
and
you know Samir we're going to have to
wrap things up there but best of luck
to you with your company moving forward
I have been speaking with Samir Tendukar
he is the founder and CEO of Khal.com
I'm multimedia journalist tory singer
Thank you
