Undeterred by Juicero, here comes the smart yogurt maker

Photo credit: Yomee.

After the Juicero debacle, now doesn’t seem like a good time to be coming out with a smart gadget for the kitchen. But Ashok Jaiswal is undeterred.

The cheery entrepreneur – born in India, based in Hong Kong – is preparing to launch a yogurt maker that connects with a mobile app.

He has good reason to feel impervious to the backlash against the pricey juicing machine: homemade yogurt is hard. Really, properly hard. “It’s messy to make,” Jaiswal adds.

When the startup founder was at a recent dinner party and mango lassi – a fantastic Indian drink – arrived at the table, he made an offhand comment about it being better to use your own yogurt in a lassi, and the other guests were stunned that it was even possible to make yogurt at home. “Nobody believed me,” he laughs.

I also didn’t know it could be made at home overnight. But after seeing a bunch of recipes online that demand things like coolers, thermometers, and cheesecloths – all things I don’t possess and don’t plan on buying until I’m about 70 years old – I’m not about to give it a go any time soon.

Even with a conventional yogurt making machine, which go for as little as US$20, there’s still quite a lot of manual input needed.

Like a Keurig or a Nespresso, the Yomee focuses on pods – without the plastic packaging. Photo credit: Yomee.

Growing up in India, which he left in 2002, Jaiswal knew a bit about making this staple – which is used in curries as well as lassi – after seeing his mother do it countless times. But as an adult, he found himself out of his home nation and unable to make his own yogurt.

When his daughter appeared on the scene a few years back, he noticed with horror how much sugar is in most store-bought yogurt.

“I’d never feed her spoonfuls of sugar,” he says – yet here are a bunch of companies expecting everyone to shovel their insanely sweetened desserts into our kids.

No-frills and chill

With Yomee Yogurt, Jaiswal’s third startup but his first foray into the food industry, he wants to take the mess and the tricky prep out of homemade yogurt. And avoid all that sugar. It won’t make the process much quicker – it’s still an overnighter – but it will genuinely be a labor-saving device.

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