Posha: The AI-Powered Countertop Robot Revolutionizing Home Cooking

Meet Posha, a countertop robot that cooks your meals for you | TechCrunch

In 2017, Raghav Gupta set out to solve a personal problem: he wanted easy access to the home-cooked meals he grew up eating without having to spend time cooking or spend money on takeout or hiring a private chef. He turned to robotics, which led him to found the startup Posha. Posha, a former TechCrunch Startup Battlefield company, builds countertop robots that make meals using computer vision. Users scroll through a list of recipes, select the one they want, add the proper amounts of the requested ingredients, and the machine makes the meal from there. The process is designed to be customizable and forgiving, Gupta told TechCrunch, so the machine allows people to make substitutions, and Posha still works if a user doesn't measure their ingredients perfectly. "It's like a coffee machine for food," Gupta said. "So when you want to drink a cup of coffee, you choose a brew of coffee on your coffee machine. You put beans, sugar, and milk in different containers. You tap brew, and out comes a cup of coffee. Posha does something similar, but for food." A coffee machine is a good, but not perfect, comparison to Posha, as Posha requires a bit more labor than a coffee maker. While Posha does a substantial amount of the work by cooking these meals, consumers still play an active role in shopping for ingredients and prepping everything that goes into the device. Chopping, especially, can take up a fair amount of a recipe's cook time. Gupta agreed that some people are just not going to go for a solution that still requires them to do some of the cooking. He said that Posha has found the most success thus far with customers who like to cook two to six times a week anyway, and are looking to lighten the load a few of those evenings. "These people are already spending an hour in the kitchen every single day, deciding what to eat, shopping for ingredients, cooking a meal, [and] cleaning up afterwards," Gupta said. "We help them shave off at least at least 70% of this time, so they now end up spending only about 10 to 20 minutes every single day." Posha, formerly known as Nymble, originally started out as a robotic arm, Gupta said, but the company's time in Bosch's accelerator program prompted them to change course. They learned consumers didn't want something that moved around their kitchen or that would be hard to clean. The company has kept in close contact with its early customers ever since. "We have been super focused and super obsessed with customers from day one," Gupta said. "We don't use Zendesk to chat with them, we have WhatsApp conversations with over 100 of our customers. Most customers know me personally. I moved to the U.S. in the middle of the pandemic, just to be close to my customers." That system can't scale, but clearly works for Posha for now. Gupta said that, so far, Posha has mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing for the $1,750 direct-to-consumer countertop device. Posha recently raised an $8 million Series A round led by Accel with participation from existing investors including Xeed Ventures, Waterbridge Ventures, and Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, among others. Gupta said that Posha will use the funding to continue to develop the product. In particular, the company wants to add more recipe options and the ability for people to suggest recipe ideas and have generative AI turn those ideas into instructions and add them into the device quickly. The company launched its Posha robots in , and has since sold out of its first batch -- and is taking pre-orders for its second. "If you look at your microwave, your dishwasher, your refrigerator, at some point in time, these devices were countertop devices," Gupta said. "They became so indispensable over time in consumer homes that builders started installing these devices in your homes. We feel Posha will have the same fate very soon."

Kitchen robotics startup Posha raises $8 million from Accel, others

Kitchen robotics startup Posha has raised $8 million in a Series A equity funding round led by venture capital firm Accel. The round also saw participation from existing investors including Xeed Ventures, Waterbridge Ventures, Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani, and GreyOrange founders Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta. The fresh capital will be used to expand Posha's recipe database, enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and improve the user interface and product availability, its cofounder Raghav Gupta said. Posha -- formerly known as Nymble -- has developed a countertop kitchen robot that automates the entire cooking process using computer vision, AI, and robotics. Equipped with cameras and thermal sensors, the robot can independently add ingredients, control heat, and adjust spice levels during cooking. Gupta told ET that the product is designed to address a problem increasingly common in urban households: lack of time to prepare fresh meals. "In developed countries like the US, people try to be self-reliant, and the cost of services like food delivery or hiring a personal chef is super high -- it's not as affordable as it is in India," he explained. The company is currently focused on the US market and has not disclosed timelines for entering the Indian market. The device -- priced at $1,500, or about Rs 1.26 lakh, in the US -- began shipping in January. Users can opt for a $14.99 monthly subscription to access more recipes and customise meals, including requesting recipes not already available on the platform. It currently supports over 500 recipes across various cuisines and is developing a personalised recommendation system that adapts to individual taste preferences. Posha has a 50-member team, with a significant portion of its research and development operations based in Bengaluru. Robotics startups building for home kitchens remain a niche segment globally, but investor interest in the category has grown in recent years as AI and hardware costs have become more accessible. "Posha is tackling a persistent problem in modern households: how to get a healthy, home-cooked meal on the table when time is short," said Pratik Agarwal, partner at Accel. "Their AI-driven approach is practical, well-designed, and represents one of the first tangible examples of AI directly addressing a genuine human need in a meaningful way."