How SK Rameshkumar Turned a Dining Hall Dilemma Into a Startup

When I sat down with Sanjay Krshna (SK) Rameshkumar a junior at Colby College, I didn’t expect him to pull out his phone and show me a live app that he had just been able to download to his phone two days prior. But there was Menyou, complete with a bright yellow interface and a notification reminding him to rate his lunch. “It just told me to go to Bobs for dinner tonight,” he said, demonstrating how he swipes to rate each food item he had for lunch. At that moment, I saw not just an app, but a student entrepreneur deeply invested in solving a real problem with creativity, grit, and a lot of heart.

SK is majoring in economics and government, and his passion lies in startups and entrepreneurship. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, he’s always been inspired by the challenge of building something meaningful from the ground up. On campus, he’s involved in debate club and serves as treasurer of the South Asian Society. In his free time, he enjoys climbing, archery, and staying active at the gym, but much of his energy now goes toward developing Menyou.

The idea behind Menyou is simple yet powerful. Students often feel overwhelmed when choosing a dining hall to eat at each meal, only to be disappointed with their choice. Feedback systems for the dining halls like Google Forms take time to process and rarely influence immediate change. Menyou solves this by allowing students to quickly log their food preferences through swiping, capturing real-time feedback. Over time, the app learns a student’s dietary preferences, allergens, and favorite dishes to recommend which dining hall they’re most likely to enjoy each day. It even shows where their friends are eating. On the backend, the data helps dining services predict demand, reduce waste, and serve students more effectively.

Building Menyou was no small feat. With just $200 from the Back of the Napkin challenge and $500 from the Halloran Lab’s Ideate and Expand grant, SK hired a freelance developer on Upwork and began building the minimum viable product (MVP). He also recruited Arhum Nadeem, a technically skilled friend, as cofounder, and brought on Azambek Shermatov as CFO. Every dollar counted. SK even funded the project further by signing up for credit card promotions. Now, with a working app in hand, the team is preparing to run a beta test with 30–40 students and to develop a dining services dashboard.

Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Some students are most excited about allergen tracking, others appreciate the social dining component, and many simply like the ease of letting an algorithm decide where to eat. SK and his team will spend five weeks this summer at the Roux Institute’s startup accelerator in Portland, focusing on refining their product and preparing for wider rollout.

Much of this progress, SK emphasized, would not have been possible without support from the Halloran Lab for Entrepreneurship. In addition to funding, mentorship played a key role. Colby alumnus Tommaso Montagni shared insights about the challenges of building a startup without support, a contrast to the growing resources available now. Lab Director Jeremy Barron and other mentors helped the team refine their business model, suggesting early on that dining services, not colleges, should be the paying customer. Workshops on market sizing and venture capital also helped SK deepen his knowledge of the startup world.

His coursework at Colby has also proved invaluable. His research methods class in the economics department taught him the data modeling skills now powering Menyou’s recommendation engine.

Looking ahead, SK isn’t spending much time applying for traditional internships. He’s focused entirely on Menyou and applying to startup accelerators. “Most startups fail,” he told me. “But if you have grit and determination, you can succeed. Investors don’t invest in businesses, they invest in founders.”

Watching him swipe through Menyou, talk about his team, and map out his next steps, I saw exactly what those investors would see: a founder who’s all in.

Interview by Katie Bernard ‘25.