How Yindii Is Changing the Way We Save Food — One Meal at a Time
With the rise of smartphones, we no longer need cameras, calculators, or notebooks, but it has somehow managed to connect us and isolate us from the world simultaneously.
Why would anyone need to step out of their house when the delivery apps could place things directly at their doorstep?
In this age of convenience, it has become difficult to get people to care about things outside their bubble.
How do we reach people about the things that matter? Yindii has the answer. You have to meet them in their world.
Yindii is a surplus food app that connects users to restaurants, brands, and supermarkets for meal deals that are half off. Masala spoke with Yindii co-founder Mahima Rajangam Natarjan to chronicle Yindii’s rise in this era of sustainable activism.
Yindii is celebrating five years. Congratulations! How has the journey been so far?
Really exciting! We followed the path of many startups and have seen our share of ups and downs.
We started the company during COVID-19. My co-founder, Louis-Alban Batard-Dupre, used to volunteer with Scholars of Sustenance, a food bank in Bangkok.
Through this experience, he realised the amount of food waste in Bangkok. In less than three months of launching Yindii, we had 50 stores on the platform and 3,000 registered users—all with zero marketing budget.
The effects of COVID returned in 2021, and due to the slump, we took time to work on our platform. We built a team and a mobile application.
In 2022, when things calmed down, we started growing. In 2023, we had the opportunity to launch in Hong Kong and in Singapore in 2024.
How long have you been with Yindii?
I’ve been with Yindii since early 2021. After starting Yindii in 2020, Louis was looking for a co-founder.
I came to Yindii with experience in the app-based, e-commerce food and retail business, as I worked for both Lazada and Eatigo.
Yindii has collaborated with several well-known supermarkets in Bangkok. What was the process for acquiring such well-known brands?
[Chuckles] It was not an easy journey. When you are a small start-up, you don’t have much credibility. The brands ask: “What can you solve for us?”
Working with supermarkets takes time, often 12 to 18 months, because the majority of their items are consignment-based. This means food waste is often attributed to the suppliers rather than the supermarket itself.
So the first step is helping them recognise that they have food waste and showing them Yindii can make a measurable difference.
Once we launched Yindii pilot programs, they could clearly see how our solution helped reduce waste and simplify operations.
From there, scaling became much easier. The conversations have become smoother as Yindii has grown into an established presence across three markets; our partnerships and proven impact now speak for themselves.
As per Yindii’s mission, how would you say Yindii has contributed to reducing food waste?
At Yindii, our mission is to make food rescue simple, accessible, and impactful.
So far, we’ve saved close to 700,000 meals from going to waste, which is the equivalent of offsetting over 1,750 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. That’s like driving around the Earth more than 360 times or planting over 70,000 trees!
Each meal saved prevents good food from ending up in landfills and cuts greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
We’ve built strong partnerships with bakeries, cafés, and supermarkets to turn surplus food into value instead of waste.
Today we are saving a meal every minute. Our goal now is to reach one meal saved every second—a goal we’re getting closer to every day.
How does the experience differ for users and businesses in every market?
People have no clue that food waste contributes to climate change. Food waste currently contributes 8–10 percent of our global greenhouse gas emissions!
In Thailand, awareness around this issue is still developing compared to our other markets. When we first launched Yindii and explained that it was an app to reduce food waste, many people responded with, “Okay, and?”
That’s when we shifted our focus to highlight that food on Yindii is available at half price because saving food and saving money can go hand in hand.
Across all markets, the discount aspect is what attracts customers to Yindii. Still, Yindii makes sure our users see their positive impact. The app shows users how many meals they’ve saved and how much they’ve saved financially.
From the business perspective, many partners initially hadn’t measured their food waste or were hesitant to admit they have unsold stock.
We show them that Yindii can help attract new customers and clear inventory efficiently. Once they understand the financial aspect, it becomes clear to them that we are there to help.
We always tell our clients, “We are not here to increase your top line; we are here to improve your bottom line.”
Are there any challenges or prejudices you have faced that are unique to Yindii?
What people need to understand about Yindii is that we don’t collect the food from the merchants. We don’t have a warehouse where we store inventory and ask the customers to collect from us.
Yindii is simply a marketplace that connects you to the store. The food is exactly what you’d get when you walk into the store at 7 PM.
Of course, people have their doubts at first, but once they try it, their perception changes quickly. Complaints are extremely rare.
As more people hear about Yindii from friends and family, trust keeps growing. In fact, over 70 percent of our users come through word of mouth, which is the strongest validation we could ask for.
What’s next for Yindii?
We are very excited about South Korea. Seoul will be our fourth market.
We seem to be launching one market per year—not by design but naturally. Hong Kong was launched in 2023, Singapore in 2024, and now South Korea in 2025.
Our mission is to make an immediate reduction in food waste, so it is only logical to choose markets where a solution like Yindii is a need.
We also plan to revamp our Thai market. We launched in Bangkok when we were a young company, and now, over the years, we are ready to bring a better experience to the community here.
Our ultimate goal is to expand into as many markets as possible because the more countries we enter, the faster we achieve our mission of reducing food waste.
None of this would be possible without Yindii’s passionate and dedicated team. The impact of food waste is felt by everybody, and sustainability is not about a big action taken by a few people, but rather, small actions taken by many people.
The laziest way of saving the planet is through Yindii; all you have to do is sit on your couch and eat cake.