Kair sangri: the desert delicacy Rajasthan almost forgot

Sun-dried berries and beans, curd, and patience. The story of a dish born from scarcity and now served as a house speciality.

The problem we started with

Food does not fail on the plate. It fails in the twelve minutes between the pass and the door — the window where steam softens crusts, sauces separate and rice sets. Any delivery company that treats that window as someone else's problem is shipping a worse version of its partners' cooking.

We started by measuring it honestly. Temperature probes in insulated bags, timestamps at four handover points, and a texture score collected from 900 volunteer diners across three cities.

“Predict the plating minute first. Everything else in dispatch is downstream of that one number.”

The system we built

Three systems do the work. A prep-time model trained per kitchen and per dish, a courier assignment pass that runs continuously rather than at order time, and packaging specs written jointly with each partner's chef.

• Prep-time prediction narrowed the arrival window to ±90 seconds.
• Continuous assignment removed the courier queue at the pass.
• Vented recycled-fibre trays cut sogginess complaints by 61%.

What the numbers said

Median delivery fell to 28 minutes without asking couriers to ride faster — the gain came from waiting less. On-time or early delivery now sits at 98%, and partner remakes dropped by nearly half.

What's next

Next we are modelling building-level friction: elevators, gate codes and the last ninety seconds of every delivery. It is the least glamorous part of the journey and probably the biggest remaining win.