Food and beverage industry in India is a huge market and in recent years we have seen many startups in this space. On News18 Tech we get you the top 5 food tech startups that have changed the way we order food and the lives of F&B business owners.
1. Zomato
This one tops the list without any doubt whatsoever. With its fabulous success story which is an inspiration to many startups across the globe, Zomato has become the Google of Food Industry pan India. Whether tech savvy or not, no individual in the metropolitan cities of India would ever try out a new food joint before checking out its ratings/ reviews on Zomato.
What most people don’t know about Zomato though is the plethora of services that it provides to the Food & Beverages (F&B) players apart from an online listing on its website.
Pivoting around its core (an online database for restaurants), Zomato has come a long way by introducing new services to its clients from time to time. Zomato now offers integrated Table Management System (Zomato Book), Point-Of-Sale system (Zomato Base), Online ordering through Zomato Order as well as white-labelled apps to its clients.
Operating now in 23 countries across the globe, this reactive business has shaped in a wonderful manner, putting it right at the head of the industry. With its recent acquisition of Sparse Labs (A logistics-tech startup), Zomato is now planning to expand its Delivery-Tech capabilities. It promises to launch the service (a rider tracking app for both users and restaurants) under a new name for all its restaurant partners, free of cost!
2. FoodPanda
This app requires no introduction to the general masses. Having disrupted the Indian F&B industry completely with its huge discounts and offers to the customers, FoodPanda is now an integral part of it. In a bid to acquire customers pan India, FoodPanda carried out a gigantic cash-burn policy which unfortunately brought the entire Industry down to its knees.
Why, you ask?
Well, the 50% discount that you availed from the app was paid for by Foodpanda. As a result, restaurants could not sell their food at their own set rates in the open market meaning, the orders only flew in through the app while the overall orders declined.
The one who didn’t tie up with the company suffered miserably. But going forward, it got what it wanted i.e. every restaurant to be a part of FoodPanda’s listing and every smartphone user to be its customer.
Today, FoodPanda caters to more than 50 cities across India with around 10 million customers. In a very short time, this startup has become a lifeline for most of the foodies to order food to their doorstep with just a click-and-click interface on their app.
On the B2B side, almost every restaurant providing home delivery services have made it a point to enrol themselves on FoodPanda simply because of the exposure that this app provides to them in the local region.
3. Swiggy
Take the concept of FoodPanda and add a logistics tangent to it. This is exactly what Swiggy does.
With an app providing a platform for the end customers to order food from, Swiggy also provides delivery fleet to their restaurant partners to make sure there is no such thing as an untimely delivery.
Founded in August 2014, Swiggy is one of the extremely few startups that does not have a minimum order value for home delivery.
All of Swiggy’s technology has been developed In-house while the majority of its operations are dependent upon its riders. Since logistics, in F&B industry especially, is a major pain point for startups as well as restaurants, Swiggy is sure doing well by maintaining a leading role in the industry till date.
4. NomNom
This year-old startup in India has been able to take hold of one of the major pain points for restaurants. Anyone who has been on the other side of an order-placing call knows the enormous hassle which the restaurateurs have to go through for taking an order. Add to that a large number of inflowing calls on a minute-to-minute basis, restaurants were never able to optimise their operations.
Founded by Ex Bain & Co. employees, NomNom provides a centralised Order Taking Solution to restaurants by forwarding their phone lines to their own call-centre agency. Specialised agents which are trained upon the menus of the restaurants ensure a smooth order taking process for the customers. The order is then pushed to the restaurant’s POS.
While NomNom started off as an operational based startup, it soon had to refigure its policies. Given to the long chain of integrations required for transferring the phone lines, entering the order into their In-house CRM, pushing it to the restaurant’s POS and keeping in account all the logistics information for timely home delivery, it soon had to integrate with all the major Tech companies in the field.
Now you might not understand the level of convenience provided by this startup straightaway but to restaurants, they promise an answering level of 99% of all order-taking phone calls as opposed to an average of just 60-70% which restaurants manage by themselves.
More calls answered = More orders taken = More revenue for the restaurant. Very simple!
5. InnerChef
This end-to-end food ordering platform takes it upon itself to perform each and every function involved in bringing food to your door. Started in April 2015, this startup quickly had to pivot around its original idea of delivering ingredients to customers which could further be used to make a dish.
Now, Innerchef accepts orders from customers through their app and website, the food is cooked in their own centralised kitchens at various locations and then delivered through a single channel. In a very smart move to utilise the expertise of home bakers in India, Innerchef also launched a dessert platform by the name of Indulge.
Indulge is a hyperlocal marketplace for dessert which acts as a connection between home bakers and millions of potential customers, which, they are unable to reach otherwise. For utmost clarity to the customer, even the name of the chef is mentioned below the dishes in the Indulge menu.
A simple bit of technology used by a bunch of innovative minds to create a win-win situation for everyone, this startup has surely made its mark in the industry.
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