The Morning Brief Rebel Foods’ chief on Building Brands, Tech, and an IPO on the Horizon
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Oct 24, 2025 Jaydeep Barman, Co-founder and Group CEO of Rebel Foods, shares how his cloud-kitchen company reshaped India's restaurant market. He discusses Rebel’s move to a kitchen-only model, driven by survival pressures and delivery demands. Jaydeep highlights their unique no-CV hiring process, emphasizing a founder mentality. He reveals insights on operational complexities across multiple cooking brands and the tech powering their kitchens. Excitingly, he hints at profitability on the horizon and plans for an IPO next year.
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Delivery Tailwind Made Kitchen-First Viable
- India had a strong delivery tailwind starting 2014-15 that made delivery-centric restaurants viable.
- Rebel Foods bet kitchens over high-street real estate to match Indian consumers' heavy delivery use cases.
Use Cases, Not Customer Segments
- Food demand splits by use case rather than customer segment, enabling multiple brands from the same kitchen.
- Rebel launched discrete brands per product-box and built a tech-led OS to operate them at scale.
Hiring Without CVs Built Founders
- Jaydeep recruited without CVs by asking contacts for people who showed passion and ownership.
- Eight hires followed; five became Rebel co-founders and three later founded other startups.
