iFood.tv…web2.0 nirvana for the food lovers

iFood.tv is a video community for food lovers that is getting some good traction. It has been started by a bunch of Indian expats in the US, who hit upon this idea after spending hours on the internet trying to find the right recipe. Buoyed by the growing number of food related blogs and culinary videos on YouTube, they are seeking to grow this into a complete community around food. The primary audience for the site is not housewives as one might think, but young professionals living away from parents. It is necessary for such people to manage their food themselves, hence access to a ready repository on the web will come in handy for them. iFood in four months since launch has aggregated 4000 recipes and is getting 6 million hits monthly (source: iFood.tv team)

iFood is looking towards professional chefs, culinary students, food bloggers, hobbyists, restaurant hoppers, knowledge seekers, and other special-interest groups to promote production and consumption of content on the site. The website comes with all the web2.0 goodies that internet junkies are all too familiar with- search, tags, ratings, commenting, bookmarkings etc. You are likely to find recipes from all over the world with a sizable chunk of them being about Indian food spread over its different ethnicities. It has a growing collection of culinary videos, such as the one shown below, which teaches you how to make roomali rotis (referred to as handkerchief bread).

iFood is an indicator that web2.0 is spreading its tentacles over hitherto unexplored frontiers of our lives. Food is a universal human need- so the demand side of the business equation is unquestioned. The unanswered part might be the revenue model which for IFood is primarily oriented towards advertising with a possibility of other options e.g services and listings.