For millions of Indians living away from home, cooking isn’t just a task. It’s an everyday dilemma.

Long work hours, crowded commutes, and shrinking personal time have quietly pushed home-cooked food out of daily life. Ordering in feels easy, but it’s expensive, unhealthy, and rarely satisfying in the long run. The desire to eat ghar ka khana remains strong, yet the effort feels overwhelming.

This is the exact gap upliance.ai is trying to fill.

Founded in 2021 by IIT-Bombay alumni Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma, upliance.ai is not just selling a smart kitchen appliance. It is selling the promise of making home cooking realistic again for urban Indians, including working couples, single professionals, and nuclear families.

At the heart of the startup is an AI-powered cooking device that can prepare over 750 dishes across 34 cuisines. It chops, stirs, sautés, weighs ingredients, and guides users step by step. You choose a recipe, follow simple instructions on the screen, add ingredients, and the device takes care of the rest.

But the real story begins after upliance’s first version entered real Indian kitchens.

Learning From Indian Cooking, Not Replacing It

Early users made one thing clear. Indian cooking is emotional. People want to see onions turning golden, hear spices crackle, and feel in control. With upliance 1.0, many felt disconnected from the process.

Instead of ignoring this feedback, the team leaned into it.

The result was upliance 2.0, designed to feel less like a machine and more like a familiar kadhai. A transparent glass lid lets users watch food cook. A virtual flame replaces confusing temperature numbers with low, medium, and high heat, something every Indian understands instantly.

The upgraded device also handles oil-heavy, high-heat Indian cooking better, reaching up to 160°C for proper browning and roasting. There is even a manual mode with a dial, giving users the comfort of hands-on control whenever they want it.

When AI Learns Your Kitchen Habits

What truly sets upliance apart is its software.

The device learns from what people cook regularly, what gets repeated, skipped, rated highly, or abandoned halfway. New recipes are added weekly based on trends and community demand. Feedback shared in WhatsApp cooking groups is often fixed within hours.

Powered by its proprietary UpAI engine, upliance can even turn a YouTube recipe or a handwritten family recipe into guided, step-by-step instructions tailored for the device.

Add macro tracking, diet-friendly modes, and remote control through a mobile app, and the experience starts feeling personal, not robotic.

Competing With Food Delivery, Not Appliances

Interestingly, upliance.ai does not see other smart kitchen brands as its biggest rivals. Its real competition is food delivery apps.

The company’s goal is simple. Make cooking at home easier than ordering outside.

That clarity seems to be working. The startup claims over six lakh meals cooked so far, strong traction in metro cities, and a 186% revenue jump in FY25. Backed by investors like Khosla Ventures, Rukam Capital, and Rainmatter, upliance.ai is betting big on long-term growth and deep tech innovation.

More Than A Gadget

upliance.ai isn’t trying to change how Indians cook. It is trying to remove the friction that stops them from cooking at all.

By blending AI with cultural intuition, the startup is answering a quiet but powerful question many urban Indians ask every day.

Can I eat home-cooked food without sacrificing my time, energy, or sanity?

upliance.ai believes the answer is yes and it is building its future one meal at a time.