Why Are Indians Shopping for Things They’ll Never Buy? Purvansh Parmar, Co-founder of Food Never Comes

What happens when you turn one of the most common dopamine loops—ordering food out of boredom—into a website?

I sit down with Purvansh Parmar, a 26-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur from Udaipur, to unpack the story behind Food Never Comes, a website designed to make people more aware of the habits and dopamine loops surrounding online food ordering. 

Built by two 26-year-old software developers - Purvansh Parmar and Anshul Sharma - from Udaipur in India's northern state of Rajasthan, FoodNeverComes says it has attracted more than 2.7m visitors since its launch in June. 

It now offers 22 kitchens, 327 dishes and 319 real recipes, complete with fake prices, a simulated checkout and a fictional delivery experience. Purvansh explains how personal experiences, self-help books, and an idea discovered through social media led to a project that grew to millions of visits and around 200,000 active users. Lesson from launching products. Good dopamine V bad Dopamine. Vibe Coding (good v bad) & Building in Public!  And much more!

In this episode we talk about:

🧠 The idea behind Food Never Comes — how boredom, food ordering, and dopamine loops can turn everyday behavior into repetitive habits.

💡 From personal experience to product — how living alone, unnecessary online purchases, and curiosity about habit formation inspired the project.

🌍 Millions of visits and global reach — the website has reportedly received 2.7–6 million visits, with fake kitchens adapted for different countries, cuisines, and currencies.

🎮 What's coming next — a new interactive game planned for the second week of October, plus new products including Extinction and Trip Never Leaves.

🔐 Privacy and analytics — how the team approaches user data and why they don't sell personal data or track individual food selections.

🤖 The reality of vibe coding — how AI-assisted development is making it dramatically faster to go from an idea to a working product, while also creating new security risks.

 🚀 Lessons for aspiring founders — why solving a real problem, saving people time or money, and paying attention to overlooked ideas can be more valuable than simply chasing trends

📱 Managing digital consumption — Purvansh shares how he limits his own Instagram usage and why balancing digital habits with physical activity matters

Extinction  - An upcoming application intended to block access to shopping websites and redirect users toward alternative activities. 

Trip Never Leaves. - A companion concept that lets users create fake travel itineraries inspired by feedback from communbities on Reddit and X

Can you use technology to make people aware of the habits technology itself creates?

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/purvanshparmar/

The Indian Startup Show is hosted and produced by Neil Patel

Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilpatel2/

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