‘Keurig for yogurt’ startup hits Kickstarter

Photo credit: Yomee.

An experienced gadget-making entrepreneur is hitting Kickstarter today with his Keurig-style gizmo for easy homemade yogurt.

Ashok Jaiswal has priced the Yomee yogurt maker at US$99, replete with 20 pods for four weeks worth of yogurt.

Yomee turns the milk of your choice into chilled yogurt in six hours. It’s configured through a companion app:

Jaiswal, based in Hong Kong, had a hit a few years ago with Ezeecube, a media storage gadget aimed at families. After moving on from that business, he felt that he was ready for something totally different.

“Now hardware is not a challenge,” he told Tech in Asia a few months back. So he wanted to leap into a business that involves food. That’s because “food tech will change the world,” not least due to the supersized scale of the markets involved – the worldwide yogurt industry alone is worth US$85 billion.

Photo credit: Yomee.

The entrepreneur is undeterred by the demise earlier this month of Juicero, the US$400 web-connected juicer that basically just smooshed a bag of chopped fruit, because he reckons that yogurt is hard to make at home – even with the yogurt makers already on the market. Indeed, many people don’t even realize, he says, that yogurt can be made at home.

“Some store-bought yogurt has more sugar than a Twinkie,” says co-founder and marketing boss Tu-Hien Le. So making it at home is a healthier option.

Aside from Yomee’s US$28,000 Kickstarter goal to help ship the gadget by April 2018, Jaiswal has raised US$350,000 from unspecified investors.

Want to learn more about hardware startup or how to crowdfund for your product? Register your interest here so we can tailor content that you’d want more of at our Tech in Asia conferences!