Digital Transformation of Informal Recurring- Revenue Meal Services: The Design and Analytical Evaluation of a Two-Sided Subscription Marketplace

Abstract

The unorganized mess, tiffin, and home-kitchen sector serve tens of millions of Indian students, coaching aspirants, and urban migrants, yet remains almost entirely outside formal digital commerce. Existing food technology platforms are designed for single-order, on-demand delivery and do not address the recurring, subscription-based nature of daily meal arrangements. This paper applies Design Science Research (DSR) to specify and analytically evaluate "MessConnect", a proposed two-sided digital-platform artefact designed to formalize this segment through verified vendor discovery, attendance-linked subscription billing, cashless payments, and a WhatsApp-first interface for low-digital-literacy vendors. Following the six- phase DSR process model of Peffers, Tuunanen, Rothenberger, and Chatterjee (2007), the  paper documents problem identification, solution objectives, artefact design (including use- case, entity-relationship, sequence, wireframe, and workflow diagrams), and an analytical (expert-review and literature-grounded) evaluation of the proposed platform, business model, and technology architecture, situating the design within two-sided market, informal-sector- digitization, and technology-acceptance literature. The paper's scholarly contribution is  fourfold: (i) a structured comparative positioning of the artefact against existing single-order food-delivery platforms, subscription-box models, and hostel/PG aggregators; (ii) a conceptual research model linking the artefact's design constructs to adoption and retention outcomes; (iii) three testable propositions and a fully specified empirical validation protocol; and (iv) four design principles (DP1–DP4), a recognized form of generalizable DSR knowledge, distilled from the analytical evaluation for application beyond this single case. Consistent with DSR reporting norms, the paper explicitly distinguishes the analytical evaluation reported here from the empirical (field) evaluation that remains to be conducted, and presents no primary survey, interview, or transaction data as already collected.