Masterchef Sanjeev Kapoor has always been at the forefront of adopting new digital technologies. Under his name & entrepreneurship, cooking has emerged from the shadows of the kitchen and invaded our living rooms through the small screen. In the 90s itself, he found himself betting on a new strategy to take the culinary industry to unheard-of heights of glory & recognition. Content designed for his audience and fan-following was at the core of that strategy.

Sanjeevkapoor.com is possibly the world’s largest repository of recipes and insights. The website offers hundreds of thousands of recipes for a variety of dishes. Plus, everyday recipes are shared on his social media channels, with a combined following of more than 20 million followers worldwide. 

But the problem is that social media and YouTube are full of distractions and are not designed to offer a wholesome learning experience. Because when you want to teach someone not just how to learn a new skill but master it and implement it to drive specific outcomes or successes, you need a lot more than distributed content on social media.

At the same time, while offline courses by Chef Sanjeev Kapoor were already available at the Symbiosis School of Culinary Art, a reputed institution in Pune, India, offline education systems have always struggled and can’t really offer the large scale, outreach, and potential possible on the internet.

The convenience of on-demand learning is unbeatable in the offline ecosystem. But no tangible method or platform existed that could help package the knowledge into digital information products like an online course.

Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and his team evaluated how online courses could enable a consistent, personalized learning experience for their target audience and what tech would be needed to be built to offer that complete learning experience from one space. And this is when Knorish pitched in to help build and launch that platform for the legendary Sanjeev Kapoor to enable that complete learning experience.

Team Knorish worked with Team Sanjeev Kapoor to ideate the courses, topics, course content, and the launch strategy for the academy and the courses.

The two teams worked together to create what is known today as Sanjeev Kapoor Academy – A premier platform to learn & improve your culinary skills, discover how to start a successful food business from home, build your immunity and improve health and culinary skills.

The academy offers a host of courses and course bundles that can be taken up by learners to hone their skills and start their food ventures. Plus, learners get opportunities to interact live & learn from MasterChef directly. Additionally, learners also get access to dedicated communities besides access to competitions and other bonus content that is continuously added to the courses to keep them abreast with the times. 

THE FIRST STEP WAS TO IDENTIFY THE TARGET AUDIENCE & THE PAIN PROBLEMS THAT THE TARGET AUDIENCE IS FACING. TOGETHER THE TEAM IDENTIFIED THE TOP 4:

• Target Audience: Home chefs, Homemakers, Food Enthusiasts, Food Entrepreneurs, & Aspiring Chefs
• Pain Problems & Needs
  • Financial stability and independence
  • Entrepreneurship that could be started at low costs
  • Better health and immunity
  • Better culinary skills

The next step was to ideate courses and content around these pain problems. And one of the clearest ideas that I came across was food entrepreneurship. That meant starting a food business and the biggest need of the target audience was – entrepreneurship that could be started at low costs. Hence, Start Your Food Business From Home was the perfect idea because it addressed and helped resolve all the pain problems of the target audience.

Sanjeev Kapoor explains, “It has always been our endeavour to empower people through food, and there is no better way to enable this than through online courses. Sanjeev Kapoor Academy attempts to become the single destination for all culinary needs and will offer many more courses shortly.“

Once the target audience and their pain problems were understood, the team ideated the course topic and content, created the website content, and eventually launched the courses. Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and his team got together to shoot the videos for the courses. Team Knorish produced the videos for the course content, assessments, recipe instructional videos, and all the additional content needed for the courses.

From the website design and course content uploads to building the social media pages and setting up ad accounts to going live with the launch, all of it was done in under three weeks—something completely unheard of in the industry.

Unlike social media or Youtube, where the minutes spent with your brand vary significantly, learners spend hours with the academy improving their culinary skills.

Based on this access to a specific target audience, the academy has leveraged brand sponsorships & partnerships with other unique food & beverage brands, such as US Cranberries and many others in the pipeline.

For example, to promote the use of Cranberries in India, the academy curated a set of cranberries-based recipes and developed a course around the theme. This course was then offered as free content to existing and new users.

Tens of thousands benefited from those free pieces of content that benefited both brands. The academy gave valuable information and knowledge to the community, and US Cranberries got a specific, highly engaged audience in return.