India, May 2 -- Long before Travis Kalanick, cofounder and former chief executive of Uber, acquired a controlling stake in CloudKitchens in 2018, a Bengaluru-based startup was making waves, whipping up global cuisines, offering a new selection of dishes every day, booking orders via its website and app, providing sturdy packaging suitable for transit and delivering the freshly prepared food within 30 minutes. FreshMenu, founded by Rashmi Daga, positioned itself as a multi-cuisine cloud kitchen with an integrated ordering and delivery model, blending elements of restaurant operations and food delivery platforms.

Now, purists would complain that our analogy does not hold. After all, Kalanick's venture is the 'WeWork' of ghost kitchens (ano...