dubara
Event tableware, rented and washed, with AI-assisted ordering, tracking and customer service.
dubara is my wife Meghna’s company. It rents real stainless steel plates, cups and cutlery for events across the San Francisco Bay Area, delivers them clean, collects them after the party and washes them. Since February 2025 I’ve designed and built everything it runs on: the website, the customer app on the web and iPhone, and the admin console Meghna runs the business from.
Why it exists
In 2021, our ten-year-old asked Meghna what her generation had done about the planet. dubara is the answer she went and built.
dubara means “again” in Hindi. Meghna grew up where steel plates were passed down and used for decades. She’s bringing that habit to Bay Area birthdays, offices, schools and city events, where three hundred plates are usually used for half an hour and carried out in bags.
She runs the business. I’m the product team: I design it, build it and fix it when she sends me a screenshot.
The market
Americans spend about $7.6 billion a year on disposable plates, cups and cutlery.
Why now
Event rental in the US is about a $5.5 billion business, and almost none of it is the plates. Those still get bought, used once and thrown away.
That is starting to change by law. California’s SB 54 requires single-use plastic packaging and foodware to fall 25% by 2032, with part of the cut coming from reuse. Berkeley and San Francisco already have reusable foodware rules, and more Bay Area cities are writing theirs. Every one of those events needs plates that come back.
dubara starts with the Bay Area, one event at a time: backyard birthdays, office parties, then the schools and cities that need the same thing every week.
What a rental looks like
A host picks a collection and tells us the date, the guest count and the address. The plates, cups and cutlery arrive clean in dubara bins. After the party, the host scrapes the plates and stacks everything back in the bins. We collect it and wash it.
The customer web app
Hosts plan an event in four steps: the event details, the reusables, the rental agreement, then payment. An order stays editable until a week before the party, and every change shows on the invoice. Afterwards, Impact shows what each event kept out of landfill.
The customer iPhone app
The same service as a native iPhone app: plan an event, follow it, and ask anything about rentals, delivery and washing.
Behind the counter
Meghna runs dubara from an admin console I built alongside the app: the catalogue and pricing, an orders board, invoices and rental agreements, and inventory that holds every piece from the event until it has been washed and is back on the shelf. When something is wrong, she logs it with a screenshot, and I work through the list. It’s the shortest feedback loop I’ve ever designed in.
Where it is now
dubara is renting for events across the Bay Area. The new website is in pre-launch, and the iPhone app is in TestFlight.
Of everything I’ve designed, this is the one I care about most. It’s Meghna’s, and it started with our daughter’s question.