Heshel AI

Heshel helps you turn recipes you love into meals you actually cook — by connecting what’s in your kitchen, what you’ve saved, and what you need to buy.

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About the Project — Heshel AI

💡 Inspiration

Heshel AI was inspired by a simple observation: people today save more recipes than ever, yet cook fewer of them.

Recipes live across YouTube 📺, screenshots 📸, notes 📝, and memory — while ingredients live in the fridge 🧊. The disconnect between the two is where motivation breaks down.

We wanted to build something that quietly bridges this gap — helping people move from inspiration ✨ to action 🍽️ without friction, guilt, or complexity.

Kitchen master

📈 Market Opportunity

Recipe and cooking apps see massive global traction, with over 2.5 billion downloads, more than 1 billion monthly active users, and nearly 60% of consumers using them for meal planning.

In India 🇮🇳, food and lifestyle apps thrive as users spend an average of 4.9 hours per day on mobile apps in these categories. Platforms like Archana’s Kitchen demonstrate strong demand for authentic regional cuisines 🍛, meal plans 🗓️, and festive menus 🎉, reflecting a culturally deep and highly engaged market.

However, despite this growth, a critical gap remains.

People today save more recipes than ever — across YouTube, screenshots, notes, and recipe apps — yet cook far fewer of them. Studies show that 60–90% of saved recipes are never cooked, becoming “graveyards of good intentions” 🪦 due to poor organization, forgotten links, and mismatches between recipes and available ingredients
(Mintel).

This disconnect is especially relevant in India, where:

  • 51% of consumers are cooking more at home 🏠 due to inflation
  • Young adults increasingly return to family and traditional recipes ❤️ as a form of self-care
  • Home cooking is driven by health 🥗, cost 💰, and emotional connection

The recipe app market continues to surge, with the Asia-Pacific region projected as the fastest growing, achieving a 15–18% CAGR, fueled by expanding middle classes in India and China and rising smart-kitchen adoption
(Verified Market Reports).

Yet, despite massive content availability and growing demand, the gap between digital inspiration and real kitchen reality continues to block execution — leaving users motivated but unable to act.

Heshel addresses this gap directly by transforming saved inspiration into actionable, ingredient-aware cooking decisions

🤔 What it does

Heshel AI helps people decide what to cook — and actually make it happen.

Instead of letting recipes get lost across YouTube, screenshots, and notes, Heshel brings everything together and connects it to what’s available in your kitchen right now 🧺.

🔑 Core Capabilities

With Heshel, users can:

  • 📷 Recognize ingredients directly from fridge photos or written notes
  • 🧾 Extract recipe details from screenshots or saved notes
  • ▶️ Save and organize YouTube recipe links (currently the supported format)
  • 🥦 Set dietary restrictions and preferences, such as vegetarian, vegan, or allergy-based constraints
  • 🔄 Discover personalized cooking suggestions through an intuitive swipe-based UI, powered by:
    • Available ingredients
    • Saved recipes
    • Dietary constraints
    • Ingredient gaps and substitutions

🍽️ From Possibility to Action

Heshel doesn’t just recommend recipes — it shows:

  • ✅ What you can cook immediately with what you already have
  • 🛒 What ingredients are missing if you want to cook a specific dish
  • ⭐ The best-fit options based on effort, availability, and personal preferences

At its core, Heshel transforms fragmented inspiration into actionable decisions:

By reducing decision fatigue and aligning recipes with real-world availability, Heshel helps users cook more often 🍳 — and waste less ♻️.

🛠️ How we built it

Heshel was built as a mobile-first, AI-powered cooking companion with a strong focus on clarity and calm 😌.

  • Ingredient recognition using image and text inputs
  • Recipe extraction from screenshots, notes, and YouTube links
  • A structured global ingredient system to normalize inputs 🌍
  • A swipe-based recommendation UI for fast, intuitive decisions 👉
  • Dietary filtering layered into the suggestion engine
  • Thoughtful empty states that guide users instead of overwhelming them 🧭

We prioritized real-world usability over feature count, focusing on flows that feel natural in everyday life.

💸 Monetization Strategy

Heshel follows a low-friction, habit-first subscription model designed to let users experience real value before paying.

Cooking is a daily behavior 🍳, and monetization is intentionally delayed to allow trust and usage patterns to form.

🎁 Free Usage Period

All users receive 1 month of full, unrestricted access to Heshel.

During this period, users can:

  • Recognize ingredients from fridge photos and notes
  • Extract recipes from screenshots and YouTube links
  • Track kitchen ingredients 🧺
  • Receive personalized recipe suggestions
  • Generate shopping lists 🛍️
  • Apply dietary restrictions
  • Use the swipe-based recommendation experience

This free period is designed to help users:

  • Build a cooking habit 🔁
  • Understand Heshel’s value in real daily use
  • See tangible improvements in decision-making and planning

No feature limitations are imposed during the trial.

🔒 Paid Subscription

After the free period, Heshel transitions to a simple, affordable subscription:

  • $0.99 per month
  • 🚫 No ads
  • 🔓 No locked core features
  • ❌ Cancel anytime

This pricing is intentionally set to be:

  • Accessible for everyday home cooks
  • Low cognitive overhead (no complex tiers)
  • Sustainable at scale due to AI cost optimization

🔁 Subscription Management (RevenueCat)

Heshel uses the RevenueCat SDK to manage subscriptions across platforms 📱.

RevenueCat enables:

  • Seamless handling of the 1-month free period
  • Automatic conversion to paid subscription
  • Cross-platform entitlement management (iOS & Android)
  • Accurate revenue and churn analytics 📊
  • Support for cancellations, reactivations, and retries
  • Compliance with App Store and Play Store policies

This abstraction allows the product team to iterate on features and pricing without rebuilding billing logic.

💎 Value Justification

At $0.99/month, Heshel is positioned as:

  • A utility, not a luxury
  • A time-saving assistant ⏱️
  • A daily decision-reduction tool 🧠

The cost is intentionally lower than:

  • Food delivery fees
  • Recipe book purchases 📚
  • Wasted groceries from unused ingredients 🥬

The goal is not aggressive monetization, but long-term retention through consistent value.

🔮 Future Pricing Flexibility

While the current model is a single low-cost subscription, the system supports future expansion such as:

  • Annual plans with discounts 📆
  • Regional pricing 🌍
  • Premium add-ons for power users ⚡
  • Creator-specific experiences 🎥

Any future pricing changes will remain optional and value-driven.

🧾 Summary

Heshel’s monetization strategy is built on three principles:

  1. Earn trust before charging 🤝
  2. Keep pricing simple and fair 💡
  3. Let product value drive conversion 🚀

By combining a full-featured free month, a $0.99/month subscription, and RevenueCat-powered billing, Heshel creates a sustainable business without compromising user experience.

⚠️ Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was designing for imperfect input.

  • Fridge photos are messy and inconsistent 📷
  • Notes and screenshots vary widely in format 📝
  • Ingredient naming differs across regions and cuisines 🌍
  • Early users often start with no data at all

Another challenge was balancing intelligence with simplicity — ensuring that AI-enhanced features feel helpful, not magical or confusing.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully extracting ingredients from real-world photos and notes
  • Turning screenshots and YouTube links into usable recipe data
  • Building a smooth, swipe-based cooking suggestion experience
  • Supporting dietary restrictions without limiting discovery
  • Creating a calm, friendly interface that encourages cooking 😊

Most importantly, Heshel feels usable even on day one.

📚 What we learned

We learned that:

  • Cooking decisions are emotional, not just logical ❤️
  • Reducing friction matters more than adding features
  • Smart defaults outperform complex controls
  • Empty states are critical to user confidence

People don’t need more recipes — they need help acting on the ones they already love.

🚀 What's next for Heshel AI

Next, we plan to:

  • Expand beyond YouTube to support more recipe sources
  • Improve multi-day meal planning 🗓️
  • Enhance ingredient recognition accuracy and coverage
  • Introduce smarter shopping list optimization
  • Build tools for creators to share recipes directly into Heshel

Our goal remains simple:

Help people cook more — with less effort and more joy. ✨

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