Prachi Baxi and SmartyPans

BY ROBERT BEAR

Cook what your want,
Track what you eat!

Imagine a pan that would make cooking an interactive, fun and conscious learning experience. It’s like “fitbit for food.” The pan documents your recipe as you cook, tracks your nutrition, integrates with fitness apps and devices, allows you to share recipes and also can teach you how to cook.

The brains of SmartyPans is an encrypted bluetooth enabled microchip. But that’s not what makes it smart. We designed the pan from the ground up, for utility. One pan serves as a cooking pan, kitchen scale, oven pan and a serving bowl. It’s not just the technology in the pan that makes it smart, it’s the utility!

SmartyPans was founded by brother/sister duo Prachi Baxi and Rahul Baxi. I contacted Prachi and asked her to answer the following questions:

What gave you the idea and why did you act on it?

I’m a nutritionist and I provide nutrition counseling. During my counseling sessions, I found people underestimating their food intake by an average 30%. This was frustrating not only for my clients as they won’t see results but also for me as I couldn’t help without accurate information. Also, conscious cooking is misunderstood as diet food. An average of 76% people give up just of the mere thought of it. I wanted to fix this problem. I wanted to make conscious cooking fun, interactive and informational, while making it really easy to accurately record nutrition information.

How was the prototype process?

As soon as I got this idea, I reached out to my brother, an engineer from Carnegie Mellon. We developed the early prototype at home and used some 3D printed parts. Finding the right prototyping company took us about 3 months, we found one shop in China who built all the parts for us. In the next two months, we assembled those parts, built the electronics and developed the app.

How was the patent process?

We hired a patent attorney who helped us through out. It’s a very cumbersome process and I’d recommend consulting a patent attorney.

How do you plan to market it?

Bringing a hardware product to the market is an expensive task, especially for a young startup like us. That’s why we went to Indiegogo. We researched our market for almost a year and after getting a thorough understanding, we launched our campaign. We also get a lot of word of mouth publicity from appearances at shows like CES, SXSW, Luxury Tech Show, TechCrunch Hardware Alley, etc.

What advice would you give to those interested in inventing?

If you are inventing something out of passion and a drive to solve a problem, always go for it! Never give up.

To visit the Kickstarter Campaign Page, click here
To visit www.smartypans.io, click here