Bahubali Shete CEO of TinyChef on His Journey to 1M Voice App Users and New Voice Commerce Features on Alexa – Voicebot Podcast Ep 201
Bahubali Shete founded TinyChef in 2016 (originally known as Klovechef) as an IoT-plus-voice interactive cooking experience and pivoted to an ML-based and software-only solution two years later. That move led to the company’s Sanjeev Kapoor Recipes becoming the number one Alexa skill in India for cooking and the default first-party solution for Amazon in the country. TinyChef Alexa skills are also available in the U.S. and Canada and recently implemented the new Alexa Shopping Cart beta for in-skill voice commerce transactions.
The Alexa Shopping Cart beta keeps the Alexa skill session in-tact and enables users to make a purchase from Amazon that is promoted within the skill experience. After the purchase transaction is confirmed, Alexa returns the user to their skill session where they left off. This is particularly relevant for a skill like Sanjeev Kappor Recipes or TinyChef as users might determine they need a kitchen tool or a specific spice while they are in the middle of meal planning. This is the epitome of in-context voice commerce. The skill developer then benefits from the product sale and receives attribution information showing the successful purchase completion.
Shete is CEO of TinyChef and was an early voice app developer that had the vision to challenge big recipe players such as AllRecipes and Food Network and succeed. Prior to working in Voice, he founded the IoT startup Connovate and before that was CTO of Galaxy Intelligenta. Shete is an engineer that worked for Philips earlier in his career. TinyChef was recently chosen to participate in Google’s first Voice AI Accelerator.
In this episode, we discuss Shete’s journey to 1 million users, the success of his voice commerce initiatives so far, how the Alexa Shopping Cart feature works for skill builders, and the behavior of users when employing voice apps for cooking and meal planning activities.
Show Notes – Bahubali Shete Interview – TinyChef and Sajeev Kapoor Recipes
- Follow Bahubali Shete Twitter: @bvshete
- Check out TinyChef on Twitter and the web: @klovechef tinychef.ai
- Listen to comments by Shete on an earlier Voicebot Podcast: Voice AI in India Year in Review 2020
- Learn more about TinyChef (Klovechef) in Voicebot: Meet Klovechef (aka TinyChef), the Google Maps of Cooking
- Read about TinyChef’s (Klovechef) recent funding round: Culinary Voice AI Startup Receives $1M in Funding
You can listen to the podcast interview above, on Google or Apple Podcasts, or most of the leading podcast players.
Follow @bretkinsella Follow @voicebotai
Rohit Prasad Amazon VP and Head Scientist for Alexa AI – Voicebot Podcast Ep 191
