It all began with the culinary dilemma of six young bachelors.

Wading through the plethora of recipes on the Internet for an easy-to-cook dish, six engineering graduates were led to their eureka moment. “How about forming a start-up and developing a recipe book app?”

A year later, the app named Recipe Book, refined by artificial intelligence with over six lakh recipes, is basking in the glory of being picked as the Editor’s choice in Google Play. “It is the first app from India to receive such an honour,” said authorities at the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) Startup Warehouse at Infopark, where the start-up is based.

Even as that recognition had barely sunk in, came another: “We have been told that our product will be featured in the prestigious Google I/O, an annual global event showcasing creative coders and their innovative products, to be held in California next month. A Google team is also on its way to profile our company,” Nikhil Dharman, one of the founding members of Recipe Book, told The Hindu.

The app, which boasts a million downloads in over 67 countries on Google Play Store, shot to the top in USA Google Play placements on April 14.

The integration of ‘snap n make,’ an artificial intelligence-driven smart feature, into the app in December seems to have won over the Google Play editorial board.

The features works on a highly imaginative level — take a snap of any food ingredient and the app identifies its diverse features, and a mere shake of the phone will list out all possible recipes using that ingredient.

“We are working on a more refined version of the feature, ,” said Bestin Jose, another founding member.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by M.P. Praveen / Kochi – April 29th, 2016