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Let me tell you one thing," says AS Gopala Swamy. "Passengers like me don't mind paying Rs20 or Rs30 for good, fresh food, that doesn't come from the train's pantry." Bangalore-based Swamy, 62, is a railway regular; being a consultant in the incense industry he goes on work trips twice or thrice a month. He is attempting to impress upon me the benefits of a service that gets fresh food delivered to long distance passengers at stations of their choice, a home delivery on the train if you may. He is one of the loyal patrons of TravelKhana.

The six-month-old company that Swamy is talking about, is the second (that we could find) service in the country offering passengers something they haven't been given before - fresh, wholesome food.

The troubles of passenger s like Swamy is what spurred Pushpinder Singh to start TravelKhana (www.travelkhana.com). A regular traveller himself, he was dismayed to see the difference between the kind of facilities available outside and within trains. Then two years back he had a thought. "I wondered: when was the last time I ate something from the pantry and liked it?" he says.

Early last year, Singh provided the initial round of funding, took six weeks to get a pilot in place and rustled up a team of four to test the pilot. "Initially, we picked the major stations in the northern and western regions," he says.

TravelKhana has tie-ups with restaurants at chosen stations, which package and deliver the food. "We have a GPS-enabled mobile app. This keeps us informed about delays, diversions and if needed, we ask the passenger to call and inform us," he says. In case of delays or diversions, TravelKhana ensures that passengers get their meal at the next station. "The major work at TravelKh ana is done using software," jokes Singh.

At Mera Food Choice (MFC) too, it's a similar software that works behind the scenes, ensuring passengers get fresh meals in real time. Started by Nashik-based software engineer Piyush Kasliwal, 30, and his brother, MFC (www.merafoodchoice.com) is just three months old but is already serving 300-400 customers daily at over 75 stations. "Getting restaurants to see the profit and the feasibility of the idea was our major concern. The other issues we had was the packaging and explaining to the delivery boys minor issues like buying platform tickets," says Kasliwal.

Placing an order is either done by calling their operators, booking the food online or using their app. While TravelKhana offers non-vegetarian food, MFC is limited to vegetarian food, namely thalis. In both cases, the food offered is Indian or Indian Chinese.

"Thanks to them it was the first time I had a good meal in the train," says Yogesh Wable, an e mployee at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Nashik. Wable's meal was a vegetarian thali, served in plastic disposable containers with its own set of cutlery. "It's such a good service but not many know about it."

Proper marketing is something that both companies need to work on. While Wable heard about the service from an office colleague, all the others who have used it have learnt about it from Google. "I was in the train and looking up food options at the next station when I came across the MFC site," says Hemant Jain. Jain placed a call and two hours later, fresh dal fry and jeera rice was delivered to him at Belgaum.

The freshness of the food, the variety available, and the quality of the meal is what is keeping passengers hooked to both sites. This of course doesn't stop them from giving their own unique feedback, from thicker rotis, more vegetables in the salad to the more tissues and bigger bottles of water served with meal.

Singh takes all the feedba ck with a pinch of salt. "The intention is to ensure that passengers shouldn't go hungry," he says.