Biryani contributes 30% of the total revenue- Petoo.in

Petoo is a smart QSR focusing on super fast deliveries of conveniently packed great Indian food. Its vision is to grow as one of the most loved food brands in India by focusing not only on great food but also fantastic consumer experience. Petoo, the name was chosen because they call themselves as foodies and love Indian food, sugar and spice and everything nice.

Petoo.in will be closing the series A funding by the end of this year and about to raise $5 million from PE investors. Where do you plan to use them?

Investment would be primarily used to make food factory to expand our production capacity and expand our presence across four more cities. We'll also invest in building petoo as a lovable and reliable Indian food brand.

As we have seen lots of start-ups in 2014-2015. What makes you unique from them?

We sell what sells i.e. dishes which are proven to sell most across various cities of India. It's not like trying to sell exotic foods where you have to actually “sell” your product and create demand. We focus on top 20 per cent of the dishes which are ordered more than 70 per cent of the times. And because of this, we have a strong differentiator which only players like us can do i.e. standardizing the food and making sure the taste is same no matter where or when you order it.

The second biggest differentiator is that we can deliver on-demand in 10 minutes or less because of the unique way we have built our delivery network. We simply want to disrupt the delivery model by setting a new benchmark in delivery time.

Tell us about your business model? What are heat maps?

Petoo is a smart restaurant which sells hyper local Indian dishes and delivers it through its hub and spoke model distribution network so that food can reach customer in 10 minutes or less. We are not there yet but the model has been developed to meet that vision. Food gets prepared at central kitchen so that food quality, hygiene and consistency of taste can be maintained and then these are properly sealed in convenient Petoo boxes to be dispatched to the delivery hubs. The last mile delivery is done by bike riders who pick up the food from hub and deliver it to the customer.

Heat maps are our internal maps used to plan our delivery system. It helps us separate very high demand delivery zones vis-a-vis low demand zones and load balance our delivery capacities ahead of time so that we can meet delivery timelines without affecting customer experience. It has been very crucial for us and helped us cut our delivery cost by 60 per cent without affecting delivery timings.

How do you manage to beat the dominos delivery time? What is the strategy behind the same?

We would ultimately disrupt the food delivery market by delivering hot food in 10 minutes or less by using our very hyper-local hub and spoke delivery system which we have tested in few parts of Bengaluru. It is definitely doable by proper mix of production/storage innovations and innovative hyper-local delivery model which we are building at this stage.

What are the different cuisines or varieties in your menu?

Petoo focus on the Indian food category as it is the largest cuisine category in the country and hence also has the largest market share. Petoo’s menu is localized and is based on the most popular dishes in the zone being targeted. Each city will have a different menu because food is a hyper local phenomenon. For example we cannot expect a Bengali foodie to gouge on Vada Pav.

What is the top selling dish at Petoo.in? What is the revenue generated out of it?

Biryani is top selling item followed by our petoo boxes. Biryani contributes to approx. 30 per cent of total revenue.

What is your expansion plans?

The immediate plan is to introduce our menus and improve our coverage in Bengaluru. Petoo was operating at 13 locations in the city and this week we have started operations at six more locations taking the presence to 19 locations in Bengaluru.

What was your present revenue? What is target revenue?

At present we do a yearly revenue of approx. four crores and we're looking to hit a run rate of 12 crore by next fiscal.