Season 3 will launch on Star TV in April and will air until June 13.
Dubai production house KKompany Media Solutions concluded filming season three of Foodshala Kids, the Middle East’s first inter-school cooking reality TV show, in Dubai this month, with MasterChef Australia judge Gary Mehigan judging the grand finale. The season will launch on Star TV this month and will air until June 13.
The four finalists, chosen from 24 competing candidates by an expert jury of culinary chefs from academic institutions and five-star hotels in Dubai, will each receive a kitchen makeover, a trip to Disneyland with their mentor, and diploma courses at the International Culinary Centre of Arts in Dubai. Students from more than 45 schools vied for top-spot in the high-stakes cooking show this year. Producers and KKompany owners Gaurav Tandon and wife Kritika Rawat have created and transformed the Foodshala reality shows into successful ratings heavyweights on Indian channels.
Foodshala Kids is an offshoot of KKompany’s older and more successful Foodshala cooking reality show for adults. Passionate about food, Tandon and Rawat, both former radio professionals, decided to combine their cooking and media expertise into a reality TV show back in 2011. Its success led to the launch of the kids’ version in 2016 and several other shows in the same genre.
What makes KKompany’s modus operandi different is that the company buys its own space and time on Indian channels, thus ensuring complete control over the programme.
“We run our shows three to four times a week on various channels,” Tandon tells BroadcastPro ME. “This season will run only on Star TV; we pick our slots – time, days and dates – and pay for that space to avoid interference on how we run our programmes from channels. We get sponsors involved in our programme, and through creative product placement, we create for them the brand recognition they require without bombarding our viewers with advertising. We have been very successful in Dubai, which has been our home base. But the success of the show has led candidates to fly in from other parts of the GCC and also India to participate in this show.”
Filming in a studio in Al Quoz, the team is self-sufficient with its own full production unit comprising both crew and gear. “We have an in-house team of 26 people and around 65 people working on a show when we are shooting,” clarifies Tandon, adding that it is filmed in high definition (HD).
With Foodshala Kids gaining immense popularity in the last year, the couple now hope to take the show to the entire GCC in 2021.
