HT Labs enters recipe and cooking space with AI-powered DIY app Slurrp

A chat with co-founder Avinash Mudaliar on the company’s latest launch – an app named Slurrp

HT Labs has launched an app called Slurrp, which is designed to connect people with recipes. It is home to more than three lakh recipes, which are available in both text and video formats.

There are many recipes out there, but it becomes very difficult to narrow down on one that fits your choice of cuisine, health consideration, regional choices, ingredient preferences and allergy considerations, all together. HT Labs decided to solve this problem using artificial intelligence (AI) and launched Slurrp, India's first recommendation engine for recipes.

Over a video call, Avinash Mudaliar, co-founder, HT Media Labs, tells afaqs! that during the COVID-induced lockdown, the company started seeing an uptick in search for simple recipes like dal, rice, roti, etc. This was around the time that food delivery apps were not delivering from restaurants, and people suddenly wanted to learn how to cook and experiment in their kitchens.

“The app has two kinds of users – people who eat to live and people who live to eat. The app is meant to cater to both these groups. It helps people pick recipes, and also gives them a breakdown of the nutrition and calories in their food.”

HT Labs is well known in the entrepreneurship space for being HT Media’s innovation hub for digital-first products. The company has a portfolio spanning across edtech, fintech, OTT, food and digital publishing, in the B2B and B2C space.

Earlier, in May 2021, HT Labs launched an app called OTTplay. It is a content discovery platform that acts as a digital catalogue of sorts, and tells people which platform to watch the movies they’re looking for, etc.

HT Labs has also launched HT School – which aims to be an alternative edtech platform focusing on learning beyond the school’s prescribed syllabus.

“The aim was to democratise the watching and discovery experience. By playing in the OTT space, we want to lead the viewers to the right movie or show that they would like across OTTs based on their taste and the time they have to view. Most end up watching only what’s promoted on their homepage or patchwall, and this happens to be a fraction of the content available on a platform. We want to help users discover shows and films based on what they’ve watched and liked, and would want to watch more of,” says Mudaliar.

He has over 20 years of experience in senior management, product, technology, business development, strategy, analytics research in various media, including print, radio, television, web and digital, across India and international markets.

Mudaliar was previously with Network18, where he was chief product officer. He helped enhance the product portfolio of Network18’s digital products, ranging from Moneycontrol.com, Firstpost.com, News18.com, Cricketnext.com, Tech2, CNBC-TV18, Overdrive, Forbes, and more.

(Hero image by Maarten van den Heuvel from Pexels.)