CHA BAR opens second outlet in Kolkata

Biryani chain Biryani By Kilo has now launched its first dine-in outlet in Pune, Maharashtra.

With foodies showing insatiable love for the royal dish, this newly launched outlet is set to deliver authentic & delicious Biryanis & Kebabs to Pune locals.

BBK’s latest dining facility happens to be at Wakad, one of the fastest-growing localities of Pune.

Also Read: “Everyone who is concerned about Hygiene & safety is our customer,” says Vishal Jindal of Biryani By Kilo

The restaurant offers a wonderful vibe, outstanding service offering authentic Nizami cuisine including Fresh Handi Biryanis, Kebabs, Kormas & lip-smacking desserts. With all this and more, BBK is all set to captivate and charm gourmands of the city.

With the aim of becoming the extension of one’s dining room, BBK also has four delivery restaurants in Pune at Kharadi, Baner, Wanowrie and Wakad for last one year.

Its six delivery outlets in Mumbai and one dine-in outlet in Thane has all biryani lovers hooked within the state.

The restaurant is taking all WHO guided safety and precautionary measures, ensuring a safe dining experience.

May Interest: Restaurants Unlock 2020

The group has 40+ outlets in Delhi NCR as well as Lucknow, Kanpur, Jaipur, Dehradun, Chandigarh, Mohali, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Bhopal, Indore, Mumbai, Pune, Bhubaneswar making it pan India most loved & premium Biryani & Kebab Delivery Chain.

Angel platform Inflection Point Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in snacking startup Samosa Party.

This marks IPV’s8^th investments in the last 90 days, since the Corona Virus outbreak started in the Country.

IPV has been investing in startups in sectors like health tech, ed tech, delivery, online grocery and social distancing tech to help companies working in these areas scale up and eventually create a large-scale impact for helping people in managing the COVID situation.

“IPV is thrilled to be joining hands with Samosa Party and back their growth journey. Samosa Party has grown tremendously over the past couple of years and has risen to amongst the top brands for Indian snack food in Bangalore. In a post-COVID world of increasing focus on hygiene standards, startups like Samosa Party will be relevant as customers would trust hygienic and professional managed brands to serve them food with safety being the guiding force from kitchen to table,” said Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures.

Samosa Party was launched with a mission to make good quality samosa accessible to customers across all channels in a hygienic and trustworthy environment.

It operates by solving the supply side problem with the production and consumption of samosa at scale using technology. With best customer repeat rate and hitting revenue targets even amid lockdown, Samosa Party has scaled to serving 1.5 lakh samosas per month.

“We have been running a profitable business and this funding round further strengthens my belief that good business models that can stand tall during downturns will have no shortage of funds with credible investors like IPV backing us,” added Amit Nanwani, Co-Founder of Samosa Party.

Samosa Party intends to utilise these funds to set up the infrastructure for scale, open cloud kitchens across Bangalore and other tier 1 cities. Also, they look forward to improving their unique production technology, and at present, claim to run the leanest and the most productive cloud kitchen at Rs. 8000 per sq ft.

The Indian snack market is pegged at Rs 42 lakh crores and 65% of this is completely unorganised. With rising concerns around hygiene and well-being, customers will opt for branded and dependable food brands. With Indians consuming 2.7 times snacks compared to 2.3 times meals, Samosa Party taps this space to reach every corner of the country.

Swiggy, one of the largest online food ordering and delivery platforms, has revamped its live tracking facility to add features that will significantly enhance customer experience and bring value to their food ordering and delivery process.

The live tracking feature has been implemented across the entire fleet of delivery to increase efficiency while allowing customers to track their orders in real time– from placement of order to delivery.

Speaking on the development, Nandan Reddy, Co-founder, Swiggy said. “With our minute by minute live tracking feature, customers are kept informed of the status of their food order, eliminating the need for repeated follow ups and calls to trace the order or provide directions to delivery personnel. Such is the convenience and value enhancement of this feature, that we have observed lesser dependency on our customer care executives.”

More prevalent among radio cab and delivery facilitators, Swiggy is one of the few food delivery companies to provide minute by minute tracking of orders in real time, leading to an 18 per cent decrease in the number of calls to the company’s customer care centre.

Swiggy has also provided customers a chat feature on its order tracking page for any enquiries and feedback. Swiggy users can use the chat interface to also track or cancel their orders, creating a seamless, simplified and convenient food ordering experience. The number masking feature brings in the safety element for users. Additional developments on the platform include features like ‘What's New’ & ‘Trending Now’ and ‘Add on variants’.

“The chat support interface helps in instant engagement with customers who provide valuable feedback on the food delivery process and benefit from the live support. This update to our coveted live tracking feature is another step towards offering our customers an enhanced food ordering experience,” added Reddy.

Bengaluru based Ready-to-drink start-up DropKaffe has raised series A round of funding of $500,000 led by Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures.

Other investors in the round include GrowthStory, and High Networth Individuals including Apurva Salarpuria of Salarpuria Group, CEO of Naukri Hitesh Oberoi, and Nirupa Shankar of Brigade Group.

The dairy start-up which started its business a year ago sells its line of cold coffees and bottled dairy beverages including milkshakes and markets them across 100-plus modern-trade stores in Bengaluru including More, Foodhall, Godrej Nature's Basket and others.

Backed by Valley-based P39 Capital and other angels in its previous funding round in 2015, DropKaffe has partnered with National Dairy Research Institute for its new line of fruit-based smoothies which have a shelf-life of 30 days and does not contain preservatives.

"We have our own brewing techniques and make sure that bean-to-bottle takes a week and all our product lines are preservative free," said Chaitanya Chitta, Co-Founder at DropKaffe.

The DropKaffe has established a unit with potential to produce 20,000 units per day at the cost of Rs 25 lakh. 

Zomato, online food delivery and restaurant reservations platform’s Chief Product Officer Tanmay Saksena has quit the company.

Highlighting investor pressure to improve their financial metrics, Saksena left the company after a year, reported Livemint.

Saxena joined Zomato a year ago as global business head and was promoted as the CPO last month.

According to the report, Saksena had headed Zomato's online food-ordering operations until the end of October, when the company's co-founder Pankaj Chaddah assumed the role.

This isn’t the only abrupt departure in recent months at Zomato, which has struggled to retain top management executives.

mRUPEE, a subsidiary of Tata Teleservices announced that it has tied up with SmartD, a lifestyle management platform that helps consumers explore healthy and affordable food options in Chennai.

(SmartD) Smart Decisions Lifestyle Information Pvt Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Market Simplified, works with casual dining restaurants, Tiffin centres and food joints specific localities across Chennai.

SmartD's analytics module helps small business owners who are able to apply their acumen and engage their consumers. mRUPEE will act as the payment medium on the SmartD platform, helping consumers apportion and manage their day-to-day expenses.

"Over the last few years, there has been a tremendous change in the way people order for their food. They can do it through mobile apps and can track their food from its preparation to its delivery. But the underlying need for good food at affordable prices has always remained constant. SmartD aims to bridge this gap by on boarding a diverse set of restaurants and affordable food joints which fit the consumers' daily food requirements," said Venkat Rangan, CEO of SmartD.

"Regarding payments, mRUPEE gateway will allow consumers to pay for their meal orders in a safe and easy manner. mRUPEE will also help us in customer segmentation and will gradually allow us to do offer and discounts to our consumers basis their demand. Owing to its large distribution channel, a secured network and high customer value, mRUPEE is an appropriate partner for us," concluded Rangan.

"Mobile payment services are increasingly being used by consumers to supplement their daily needs. mRUPEE's tie-up with SmartD is a step towards our commitment to further enhance our capabilities and help make life easier for the young working class and the home makers in Chennai. The versatility of mRUPEE's services ensures that we are able to delight our customers at every touch point," said Pradeep K Sampath, CEO, mRUPEE.

Recently, mRUPEE had tied up with ICICI Bank to launch a recharge facility for Delhi Metro cards. MMPL also launched the Open Loop prepaid, VISA powered, card in partnership with RBL Bank (Ratnakar Bank).

By obtaining a PaySmart card, mRUPEE customers are able to withdraw money from VISA licensed ATMs and also pay for goods and services at all merchants that accept VISA Debit/Credit cards nationally.

Foodpanda, online food ordering and delivery firm expects India to be among its top three markets globally by fiscal 2019, even as it rubbished the reports of the company exiting the country, reported PTI.

"We are growing very fast in India and will be in the top three markets globally for the company by FY19. India is a very strong market for us," said Saurabh Kochhar, Foodpanda India CEO.

The local unit of the Berlin-headquartered company is the market leader in Indian food ordering industry, he added. The top markets for the company are Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, India and Malaysia.

When asked about the reports that the company was looking to exit from the country, Kochhar said, "We have no plans to exit from the Indian market. We are best placed to grow and consolidate our leadership in the Indian market."

According to Kochhar, during the last one year the company has seen 10 times growth in orders. "So we are looking to expand."

Foodpanda is eyeing profitability in India by FY19 as it continues to focus on technological innovations combined with adjustments to its business model.

Presently, the company is in 40 countries and has 12,000 restaurant partners across over 200 cities in India with over 2,000 employees.

Rocket Internet-backed Foodpanda is desperately searching for a buyer for its troubled India operations at a lowly price tag of $10-15 million, multiple sources familiar with the development, reported TNN.

The Samwer brothers-led Rocket Internet's interest in its Indian portfolio has been waning with most of its flagship firms, including FabFurnish and PrintVenue, being put on the block.

"Foodpanda has held talks with its competitors in India, who have been pitched with a sale value of $10-15 million," a source said.

Despite the low valuation, the food ordering platform has not found a buyer yet, signalling that it may decide to shut India operations soon.

"Both Zomato and Swiggy have been approached for a buyout, besides one larger horizontal company. But Rocket is yet to garner keen interest from possible suitors for Foodpanda," another source said.

When contacted, a spokesperson of Rocket Internet told, "We don't comment from Rocket's side to rumours about Foodpanda."

Last year, Foodpanda raised more than $300 million from the Berlin-based Samwer brothers and Goldman Sachs for its global business. That's when it invested heavily in the Indian market, becoming one of the largest players in the online food ordering segment. In order to ward off rivals Zomato and the likes of Swiggy and TinyOwl, Foodpanda acquired TastyKhana and Just Eat in India. But it has since been on a downhill slide.

Reports of an alleged fraud and systematic discrepancies in Foodpanda's operations emerged last year. The company then lay off 300 people as the overall food delivery market hit a rough patch.

Foodpanda India, which is run by Pisces eServices, reported a loss of Rs 36 crore in March 2015 over revenue of close to Rs 5 crore, according to data from the Registrar of Companies (RoC) at the ministry of corporate affairs. .

Ratan Tata, top industrialist has invested in specialty tea firm Teabox, thereby continuing his long series of investments in various start-ups globally in the recent past.

Teabox said in a statement, "It has raised an undisclosed round of financing from Ratan Tata... The additional capital will help fuel Teabox's continued growth as it expands in other major markets around the world."

Teabox Founder and CEO Kaushal Dugar said, "We have grown up admiring and respecting his (Tata's) vision and business acumen on scaling the Tata group to a global level. His direct guidance and experience in the tea industry will surely help us grow Teabox to be the first global premium tea brand from India."

The Tata Sons' Chairman Emeritus has been aggressively investing in start-ups, ranging from e-commerce firms to cab aggregators. He has invested in firms like Snapdeal, Kaaryah, Urban Ladder, Bluestone, CarDekho, Sabse Technologies, Xiaomi and Ola.

Tata, who served as the chairman of Tata Sons for over two decades until his retirement in 2012, is also associated with some venture capital funds as advisor, including Kalaari Capital and Jungle Ventures.

Teabox, founded in 2012 delivers teas from Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiri and Nepal to the entire world. Within three years of its existence, Teabox claims to have delivered over 30 million cups worth of tea to customers in 93 countries.

RI Bureau

Mind Curries Hospitality Pvt. Ltd., food start-up based at Delhi aims for 100cr turnover as the company is all set to introduce trend changing themed restaurants by the end of 2018.

As a part of their core strategy, the food retail start-up will be introducing three restaurants in Delhi NCR. The two restaurants are inspired from the popular cartoon series The Addams Family and The Flintstones which will revive your childhood memories while the third one promise to mesmerize diners with the fusion of Indian and Pakistani flavours and casual dinning Further, the company is looking forward to tap other regional markets for expanding the business pan India.

Bhanu Nehra, Managing Director of Mind Curries Hospitality comments on this recent development, “We are glad that we are coming up with such distinctive restaurant concepts which will not only make diners nostalgic but also give them an overview of changing dining concepts in India. We are very positive and excited about these upcoming ventures as they are going to take dining to a whole new level”.

The company’s vision is to pacify the taste buds of masses with their undiscovered theme restaurant concepts pan India. Started with a paid-capital of approximately Rs.70 cr, food start-up by Bhanu Nehra is making its way for itself in the F & B sector since its establishment in August 2015.

Nusra

Zomato has partnered with some of Mumbai's most notable restaurants enabling millions of its consumers to seamlessly order food online using its platform.

The restaurant discovery and food ordering app launched their online ordering services in April 2015 and has soon become the go to app for ordering in from that favourite joint by your office, premium restaurants and even legendary places in Mumbai.

“Mumbai is one of our strongest markets and with these marquee brands on board we are certain we will continue to drive immense value for our customers across the city.” said Tanmay Saksena, Global Business Head, Online Ordering, Zomato.

Some of the top restaurants you can order from on Zomato are Maroosh, Café Moshe's, Cafe Zoe, Gaylord, Salt Water Cafe, Smoke House Deli and Wok in the box.

In addition, some of Mumbai's classics like - Zaffran, Bademiyan, Mahesh Lunch Home, Jaffer Bhai - can now be delivered to a users' doorstep through Zomato's platform.

Through its investee company Grab, and logistics partner Delhivery, Zomato will also service the delivery logistics for some of these top brands.

“We are really excited about partnering with Zomato for their online ordering platform and are hoping to cater to a larger target audience through this association.” said Shobita Kadan, Director, Marketing and Strategy for Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.

Zomato currently offers online ordering services for 15,000 restaurants across 14 cities in India. Zomato has also recently introduced an in-app chat feature, enabling consumers to chat with the team at Zomato for any order-related queries. This feature is currently available for users in India and UAE. With this update, Zomato has also included a host of new features and performance improvements to make the online ordering experience even better.  

Zomato, the restaurant discovery and food ordering app, today announced an update to its apps, further enhancing the online ordering experience.

In this version, Zomato has introduced an in-app chat feature, enabling consumers to chat with the team at Zomato for any order-related queries.

“Over the past 6 months, we have built a solid online ordering product and are constantly working on improving user experience. With this update, we've focused on improving and simplifying the communication flow between users and Zomato during the order process. We aim to simplify the online ordering process and give users the option of a faster, more efficient, and reliable way of getting food delivered, with the introduction of this feature,” shared Tanmay Saksena, Global Business Head - Online Ordering, Zomato.

This feature is currently available for users in India and UAE. With this update, Zomato has also included a host of new features and performance improvements to make the online ordering experience even better.

The chat feature has been integrated through a partnership with Konotor, a mobile-first user engagement platform.

Through the introduction of this feature, users can now initiate a chat with Zomato's customer support centre and ask questions or share feedback at any stage of the order process. Users can currently message the contact centre anytime between 9am and 11pm (Indian Standard Time) across all cities in India and UAE where Zomato's online ordering service is available.

The instant nature of the messages enables real time and direct line of conversation for users. Users can track their orders, get information on promos, cancel orders and/or check the refund status for a rejected order.

Swiggy online food-ordering start-up is in advanced talks to raise $35-40 million i.e Rs230-265 crore from internal investors Accel Partners, SAIF Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and DST Partner Fund, according to four people aware of the matter.

Swiggy sought to be valued at about $100 million ahead of its latest fundraising, said an investor familiar with the deal.

It is not determine if Swiggy was able to raise the money at that valuation. The restaurant aggregator's third fund raise this year comes at a time when venture capital firms are closing their purses for cash-hungry food-tech companies and asking tough questions on their business models, high cost of operations and slow growth.

Swiggy, which competes with Foodpanda, TinyOwl and Zomato Order, previously raised Rs 105 crore from Norwest Venture, Accel and SAIF Partners in June. On the whole, Swiggy has raised a total Rs120 crore by 2015. According to sources, Swiggy handles about 14,000 orders on weekdays, using its own delivery fleet.

"Unlike our competition, we own our own feet and, therefore, have complete control of the end-to-end customer experience," said Reddy.

Swiggy is also helping restaurants listed on its food-ordering platform set up so called "cloud kitchens" in locations where demand is high, Reddy said. He further adds"These dark stores are heated units that serve as a delivery unit only with a limited menu. We are also piloting Swiggy Express, where we work with gourmet caterers and chefs to curate certain set of precooked meals."

"This way customer will get their deliveries in close to 15 minutes." Swiggy says that currently its average delivery time per order is about 37 minutes. Swiggy will have to overcome several hurdles food-tech companies have run into in recent months, mostly as they relied on heavy discounting using investor money to overcome increasing competition.

RI Bureau

As part of its national expansion plans, Swiggy, India’s second largest food delivery company launched its services in Chennai today. With the launch of Chennai, Swiggy has now strengthened its foothold in the country covering all major metro and tier-1 cities.

Some of the restaurants include SaravanaBhavan, Sangeetha Veg Restaurant, Anjappar, PremsGraamaBhojanam, Hotel Junior Kuppanna, Aasife Biriyani, Wangs Kitchen, Hot Chips, Sandwich Square and Jonah's Bistro to name a few.

“Launching in Chennai will further consolidate our positions as India’s favourite online food delivery service. With Chennai, our expansion to all major cities is complete. Our goal is to revolutionize the way India eats - and in covering all major cities, we’re well on our way towards achieving our goal, thanks to our focus on timely and courteous service”, shared Nandan Reddy, Co-Founder, Swiggy.

Swiggy will provide its services which include Adyar, Velachery, Besant Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur and Alwarpet. Apart from boasting great quality of restaurants, these areas are also home to a number of young working professionals Swiggy’s primary customer base. The Chennai launch also happens to be the biggest area launch for Swiggy.

Patrons will be able to order from any of the listed restaurants either through the Swiggy website or the Android / iOS App. One of the key features of the app is the live tracking of the delivery executive as they deliver their order. Swiggy has a time commitment of approximately 30-45 minutes depending on factors like preparation time and the distance between the restaurant and the customer. Ordering food online seems to be the next big thing in the Indian logistics industry and having a short delivery time can make a world of difference between services that is preferred as opposed to one that is a last resort.

The SwiggyApp is available for download on Google Play and The App Store for Android and iOS respectively and provides customers with a simplistic, yet highly detailed interface and menu that aim to make the entire process of eating, from ordering to delivery completely hassle free. Swiggy also boasts of numerous filters like preparation time, cuisines, rating and budget that are meant to make it easier to choose. The process of checking out has been streamlined so as to make it possible to complete an order in under a minute.

RI Bureau

PepperTap, hyper local grocery delivery Services Company has tied up with Zappfresh to sell non-vegetarian items such as fresh pork, chicken and mutton to residents of Gurgaon.

Even though the service is currently in pilot run, PepperTap hopes to extend the same to people residing in other parts of the country soon. This partnership will work on the inventory led mode. Cold storage and stock facilities will be handled by Zappfresh and PepperTap will ensure the last mile delivery of meat products through its logistics network. "We are planning to sell seafood with them. We are really excited about the alliance as this will help us extend our product line to PepperTap's user base” said Deepanshu, co-founder of Zappfresh.com.

"We saw a huge overlap in our defining principles and product philosophy with Zappfresh. The brand has been instrumental in enhancing the meat buying experience for the Indian customer by relying on technology. The freshness and hygiene level of their products coupled with on-time delivery has made it a hit with a loyal customer base of 10,000 users in just three months. We aim to make the most of its popularity with this tie-up”, said Navneet Singh, co-founder and CEO, PepperTap.

Zappfresh, launched in July 2015 has delivered almost 6,000 orders a month, registering a growth rate of 60 per cent month on month. With two well-known brands who value customer service like no one else, this alliance is something that should get every meat-lover in Gurgaon smacking his lips.

Recently, PepperTap has raised $36 million in its Series B funding from Snapdeal, Sequoia India, SAIF and other new investors taking its total funding to $47 million.

Hello Curry, food start-up announced its association with IRCTC online ticketing system for railways, to supply rail passengers with "wholesome healthy meal options" during their journey by placing orders on IRCTC website (www.ecatering.irctc.co.in).

"With Hello Curry selling Biryanis and parathas with our array of curry pots in our award-winning packaging, passengers now have access to complete Indian meals on the train", said Raju Bhupati Hello Curry Founder & CEO.

Hello Curry menu would be available for all the passengers boarding different trains at Secunderabad station.

Plans are going on to offer the Hello Curry menu for passengers from Delhi, Bengaluru, Vizag and Pune "very soon", said the home delivery brand.

Boibanit, the Vadodara based food ordering marketplace, has raised $ 150K in an angel round of funding.

It was founded in April 2014 by Abhiudaya Parihar, Arunabh Parihar, Ram Manohar Rai, Rohit Gupta and Sudhir Prakash.

The start-up not only allows users to order food online from multiple restaurants but also acts as the delivery agent on behalf of those restaurants. The investment came from Varun Ahuja (R Kumar Textile Group) and Anubhav Verma (investment banker).

The start-up aims to utilise the new funding for technology up-gradation as well as to add more restaurants and locations. Earlier, it had raised seed funding from the promoters of the company.

“I used to visit Vadodara a lot, when I was working in Gujarat Refinery IOCL. There were times, especially when Dominoes refused to deliver over 3 kms a couple of times. Then we used to think why can’t there be someone who can deliver food of choice from restaurants in the city, located more than 5 Km from the Refinery Township. That’s how the idea of building Boibanit came to us” said Abhiudaya, Co-Founder & COO.

The order is received at Boibanit’s call centre and restaurants commitment on order & time is conveyed to the customer. Then the order is delivered through its nearest available delivery boy in the committed time. The software which is being used to manage the orders has been developed in-house and is in an evolving stage.

The firm is targeting 2 lakh deliveries by the end of this financial year. Currently, it operates in Vadodra, Indore, Surat, Lucknow, Noida, Ghaziabad & Ahmadabad and also planning to launch Bhopal this month. The start-up has tied up with 350 restaurants and claims to be adding three to four new restaurants to its network every week. It processes 250-300 deliveries during weekends.

This start-up also wants to be the best delivery service provider in the subcontinent and looking forward to explore collaboration with Chinese & European food delivery services.

TinyOwl, online food-ordering start-up has decided to lay off another 112 employee sits second round of staff cuts in two months as part of a restructuring aimed at reducing expenses, said cofounder and chief executive Harshvardhan Mandad.

TinyOwl lay off about 200 employees in September, many of them from its sales and delivery teams. The latest staff cuts will primarily be in sales teams in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, reported ET.

Several food start-ups, facing a slowing fundraising market are looking to cut expenses and focus on building sustainable businesses.

"It was a tough decision," said Mandad. "Going forward, our operations will have to be more tech-oriented because margins are thin in the food business as compared to other online marketplaces."

After the latest layoffs, TinyOwl expects its total employee count to drop from around 1,000 earlier this year to around 650.

The company said it is also piloting a new operational structure in Mumbai and Bengaluru, where it is making processing of orders and delivery more automatic.

Matrix Partners India and Sequoia Capital, existing investors recently pumped in Rs 50 crore in TinyOwl as it works on streamlining operations.

The company in February raised Rs 100 crore in a funding round led by Matrix Partners, with Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners participating.

Gurgaon-based Twigly said that it had received $200,000 from angel investors, including Amit Gupta, co-founder of InMobi, Sahil Barua, co-founder of logistics firm Delhivery, Mukul Singhal of SAIF Partners, TracxnLabs, an incubator backed by Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, and Deepak Singh of Anzy Careers.

Twigly, inspired by US-based Sprig, was founded in August by Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi. It works on an online kitchen model i.e. the food is made at a central kitchen and shipped to customers directly. The menu is limited and changes on a weekly basis.

Sprig, a San Francisco-based company, recently raised $45 million and focuses on delivering affordable organic food. While Twigly currently emphasizes on-demand delivery of quality and fresh food, it aims to replicate Sprig’s success in India. 

The investment comes at a time when investor interest in the crowded food ordering market is ebbing as the market readies to witness consolidation or strategic investments.

According to Twigly founders, the company from the day one is making profits on every transaction and is focused on maintaining a healthy bottom line. “Fundamentals of the business should be right to begin with. Food as a category has margins anywhere from 50-60% and companies should not be losing money,” said Minhas, pointing to the high cash burn at some of the other food-tech companies.

“Our differentiator is our high ticket size and how well we manage our costs,” Minhas added, when asked about the high failure rate in the food-tech businesses in the country.

Twigly, which opened its consumer website and mobile app on 16 September, today ships close to 40 orders a day with an average ticket size of Rs.500. The company’s 600 sq. ft kitchen in Gurgaon’s Sector 26 has the capacity to address 120-150 orders in a day.

Twigly focuses on international cuisine, from Sri Lankan prawn curry to Italian beetroot pasta and falafel sandwiches, the kitchen next door is soaked in the fragrance of Hyderabadi food made by Biryani by Kilo and just a few yards away is the kitchen of a famous bakery.

It also plans to add another kitchen in the next 45 days, which will be able to address 400 orders a day.

The company said that while it will continue to own some part of the delivery fleet to maintain a better customer experience, it will also partner with third-party hyper local delivery companies such as Opinio in the future. According to Minhas Twigly will expand in Delhi and that too in next three months.

“Eating out is still a large space and Sonal has the experience of working with food companies closely. I see Twigly as the Internet-enabled Subway of India. Execution is something that will distinguish them from the others,” said Tracxn co-founder Abhishek Goyal.

The Delhi high court has directed the Delhi government to investigate the charges regarding a complaint filed by two law students alleging that food aggregator Food Panda was levying an inflated Value Added Tax on unsuspecting customers using its services.

In his order, Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw has given the Department of Trade and Taxes three weeks to act on the complaint, while telling it to keep the court abreast of probe results.

The department was told to take action in three months if the allegations were found to be true.

“The company had not received any notification about the Delhi High Court ordering a probe into alleged inflation of food bills by the company. There is no notification that we have received regarding this,” said Saurabh Kochhar, CEO, foodpanda India.

Final year law students Pranav Jain and Aroon Menon, through their representative, former union minister and senior lawyer P Chidambaram, had informed the court that having come across several cases of customers paying excess taxes applicable to eateries and online food portals, they had designed a website called http:www.kitnatax.com to help them calculate the exact amount payable for a meal in a restaurant or delivered to their doorsteps.

Their petition explained that "over the course of time and usage of the website and application (app), it was discovered that numerous customers of Food Panda website or app were being charged taxes that were wrongly calculated leading to customer paying more to FP than was actually required as per law."

Chidambaram, along with advocate Naman Joshi, told the court that his clients' findings were corroborated when on ordering food on two occasions from two different eateries via the website's app, they realised that the VAT on both the occasions had been wrongly worked out. Instead of calculating the tax as a percentage of the sub-total, it had been determined on an amount that included the sub-total and the service tax.

"The same is in clear violation of provisions of Delhi Value Added Tax Act 2004 and leads to a cascading effect," the petition explained, pointing out that a service element already taxed by the central government was being re-taxed by Food Panda.

While the difference between the amount paid as tax and the amount actually payable was miniscule, "such amounts become significant when there are tens of thousands of such transactions on a daily basis," Chidambaram told the court.

The students maintained that they had complained about the matter to Food Panda. But when their pleas elicited no response, they had decided to approach the court.

Speaking to TOI, Joshi claimed consumers are totally unaware of how much tax is payable on ordered food and it is likely that many diners end up paying inflated amounts.This practice, he said, is probably not restricted to Food Panda, which only happened to be the first entity to be found out.

foodpanda, the food ordering platform on Monday has announced the launch of a new corporate programme for corporate meals.

The programme is targeted at companies offering to pay for meals of employees in the office.

"We are excited to roll out the new product, which is a more convenient management of orders for both companies and employees," said Saurabh Kochhar, CEO foodpanda India, and CBO foodpanda global.

It allows companies to manage and control budget set for employees by setting allowances, order frequencies, dates and times.

It also allows companies to set maximum order values according to the meal time. It also offers detailed ordering reports and monthly invoices.

The service is available to corporate customers in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines.

By RI Bureau

TinyOwl, the Mumbai based food ordering service has partnered with payments solution start-up Citrus to power its own in-app digital wallet called MyWallet.

The new feature will allow customers to make payments and also get instant refunds on cancelled orders.

“We have seen that across industries, major customer dissatisfaction happens due to challenges in refunds, “said Harshvardhan Mandad, co-founder and chief executive, TinyOwl.

MyWallet is a closed digital wallet solution, meaning users will not be able to use funds stored on the service on platforms other than TinyOwl.

Other players such as ride-hailing service Ola, too, have launched their own digital wallet services, which after gaining certain amount of traction the company opened to other e-commerce services as well.

The digital payments space is growing ever crowded with players such as Paytm, Mobikwik and even traditional banks that have launched wallet apps.

It is to be seen if TinyOwl makes a similar move to open up its mobile wallet service to third-party services in the future.

Paytm, India’s largest mobile commerce platform, announces biggest ever Online Food Festival from 9th to 11th October 2015.

The festival will offer widest selection of cuisines, exciting offers to customers who order from over 20,000 restaurants and chefs spread over 100+ cities in India through multiple online and offline food partners of Paytm's mobile wallet. Paytm expects to triple the traction for its food category during the festival period.

Speaking on the festival, Kiran Vasireddy, Sr Vice President Business said, “We are thrilled to present our first Online Food Festival this October. By offering widest variety of cuisine along with exceptional deals and discounts to our user base, our larger objective is to generate greater awareness and traction for food ordering in India. We wish to make transactions in this space cashless and help consumers discover how convenient, efficient, engaging and rewarding it is to order grub with a few clicks!”

Paytm has tied up with leading Indian online food ordering platforms such as Foodpanda, Dominos, Zomato, Swiggy, Faasos, Tiny Owl and Holachef along with Offline QSR chains such as Pizza Hut, Costa Coffee and Vaango to make this festival truly attractive for consumers.

The funding slowdown for Indian internet companies has started taking a toll on cash-hungry food-tech start-ups, forcing to scale down. Start-ups like Eatlo, FreshMenu and others not have money to sustain operations beyond a few months as they are unable to raise fresh rounds of funding, said an investment banker, reported a National Daily.

SpoonJoy, internet-first restaurant has paused operations in Delhi and parts of Bengaluru, which prompted a dig by rival Yumist in a Twitter ad-post that read: "Let us be the spoon to feed you with some real joy."

In the past few years food-tech companies mushroomed rapidly, becoming a much sought-after ecommerce sector while relying heavily on burning through cash to attract customers in a market that quickly got crowded. The change in their fortunes is symptomatic of the looming threat of a growth-stage funding crunch for Indian internet companies.

"Food-tech companies came up together and investors placed bets on different companies. But none of the (venture capital) funds have capacity to fund a round more than Series-A," the investment banker said.

Rahul Harkisanka, founder of Eatlo, said the company has money to sustain for another 9-12 months. Rashmi Daga, founder of FreshMenu, declined to give details on the company's finances. Both Harkisanka and Daga said their companies were in the market to raise fresh financing.

Manish Jethani, founder and chief executive of SpoonJoy, said the online restaurant was modifying its backend operations. "We are still serving some high-density areas. However, other low-volume areas have been put on hold till this change happens," he said.

SpoonJoy, which counts Flipkart Cofounder and CEO Sachin Bansal and SAIF Partners as investors, until recently served 1,500-1,800 orders a day in seven areas in Bengaluru. It has now suspended operations in four areas and merged its seven delivery centres into two. "Most likely, (SpoonJoy is) pivoting to a marketplace model, which they will figure out in the next two weeks," said an investor in the company, requesting anonymity.

Further Jethani says, "All our infrastructure and everything else is intact, but operations have been paused for a while because you cannot make changes at every moving place simultaneously. We are trying to optimise logistics. This is not a change in position or strategy, just a change in the back-end model."

According to start-up data tracker Tracxn, since last year, 31 food-tech start-ups have raised seed or angel funding but only five have been able to raise follow-on or series-A funding from institutional investors. This is forcing many of the other start-ups to reduce their cash burn rate as they re-assess their business models.

Hello Curry, the Hyderabad based Indian fast food chain has launched a new venture  Hello Paratha with 21 outlets in four cities.

The new venture is available in cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and New Delhi.

The group has also partnered with EatSome, a Pune-based food chain to expand its services. 

Hello Curry has also opened 12 units across EatSome outlets in Pune under its KICK model (Kitchen in Commercial Kitchen).

“KICK is a seamless platform that enables Hello Curry to move from capex high kitchens to an online model of zero-asset, Internet-first food chain in a sophisticated manner,” shared Raju Bhupati, Co-Founder, Hello Curry.

"KICK is the bridge or enabler that allows for a business model that is an easy-assembly kitchen in kitchen, highly mobile, requires no supervisor to manage operations and offers tremendous efficiencies of scale across the board. This offers incredible productivity in terms of templatised food preparation processes, deskilled operations, lean kitchen staffing requirements, lean delivery chain, and the best practices," Bhupati said in a statement.

In early 2014, Hello Curry started operations with a seed capital of Rs 6 crore and is trying to chart a pan-India footprint across Gurgaon, Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad cities in due course.

innerChef, India’s fastest growing Food-Technology company that delivers Ready-to-eat and Ready-to-cook meals at your doorstep, has raised a pre-series A round of Rs. 11cr ($1.66mn) from the leading investors from across the globe.

A number of leading Indian and International Technology Founders have participated in this round of funding: Phanindra Sama (Founder - RedBus), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder - PayTM), Anupam Mittal (Founder - Shaadi.com), Vishal Gondal (Founder - GOQii, exited from Indiagames), Sateesh Andara’s (ex DFJ) new fund, Murugavel (Founder - Bharat Matrimoney), Dinesh Agarwal (Founder - Indiamart and Tolexo), Neeraj Roy (Founder Hungama), Roshan Abbas (Founder – Encompass, A WPP company), Teru Sato (Founder – NetPrice & Beenos, Japan), ATsushi Tiara (Senior Softbank executive and ex-CEO of Bharati SoftBank), Hiro San (M&S Fund, Japan), Boris Raybov (Investor from Silicon Valley, US) and TA Venture from Europe.

Growing at 100% month-on-month since its launch in April 2015, InnerChef will use the funds to expand its footprint and launch 10 new kitchens across Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. Additionally, InnerChef will also focus on building Indulge – a Hyper Local Desserts Marketplace that brings the finest desserts from home bakers and neighborhood bakeries, across six cities within the next three months. The Indulge platform will aggregate 100,000 home bakers across 100 Indian cities within a year.

InnerChef co-founder Rajesh Sawhney expressed, “We are extremely pleased to have received support from the leading Indian and International Technology founders. We believe this demonstrates their confidence in our Kitchen-in-the-cloud business model, strength of our team, and awesome growth trajectory since the launch in April 2015. We are a Big-Data-Food-tech company that believes in continuous innovation across all aspects of business and technology to delight our customers.”

TV Mohandas Pai, former Infosys Director has invested in Licious, the food tech start-up that delivers fresh meat to the homes of consumers.

Pai made the investment along with Kanwaljit Singh, founder of Fireside Ventures and former Senior Managing Director of venture capital firm Helion.

The company said that it has brought together all stages of fresh meat procurement, processing and delivery under one roof with high standards of quality.

“The team understands the delight of their customers with consistent high quality experiences are the ones that make a real impact,” said Pai.

“We sincerely hope to forever change the consumer landscape in the fresh meat space as we go about redefining the standards of quality across the value chain”, said 28-year-old Abhay Hanjura owner of Licious.

Licious owns and operates a fully automated meat processing unit at Hennur in Bengaluru with delivery hubs in localities such as Marathahalli and Kammanahalli.

The company plans to open a total of about 10 hubs in phases to cover the rest of the city.

The company also says that the meat products were sourced after stringent internal quality checks. It uses patented, vacuum sealed and temperature controlled containers to deliver items such as chicken, lamb and sea food. It promises to deliver meat products in about 90 minutes.

Gurgaon based CyberChef, the home-cooked food tech start-up has launched its home-style meal classics delivery in Mumbai too.

“Overwhelmed by the amazing response we got in Gurgaon, we decided to spread some home-food cheer to Mumbai as well,” shared Neha Puri, Co-Founder, CyberChef.

CyberChef will be delivering the meals at Andheri, SantaCruz, Jogeshwari, Goregaon, Versova, Juhu, Ville Parle, Dadar, Sion Matunga, Powai in the Mumbai area.

The platform has around 70-75 chefs at present to cook and deliver food in the area.

CyberChef is also planning to enter Pune and Bengaluru by end of 2016.

“Our regular customers are nuclear family, 16-17 year old teenagers and the people who understand the concept like this. And the target groups are all foodies, people who are health conscious and who are away from the family,” added Puri.  

Adurcup, a BW ACCELERATE batch 1 startup from Delhi raised its first round of funding from the founders of Dineout.

AdUrCup is essentially a procurement application for Quick service restaurants-QSR. As an extension to procurement, it enables advertising on such inventory thus converting a cost center for QSR businesses, disposables, which accounts from a 5% to 12% of the bill value, into an asset. In US demand for foodservice disposables is forecast to climb 3.6 percent per year to $19.7 billion in 2017.

For advertisers this works as a mechanics to deliver a hyper local personalized advertising campaigns to customers while they eat their favorite meal, or sip a preferred beverage. As a market, OOH in India is pegged to be at INR 25 Billion, and experts suggest it to be a much bigger play vis a vis the mentioned numbers, as this is a deeply unregulated and fragmented industry.

Globally total OOH advertising revenue stood at US$36.32bn in 2014 and is set to grow at a 4.6% CAGR to reach US$45.37bn in 2019. Some of the experts further go on to suggest that applications with sharp ROI within this space will clearly have a higher absorption rate amid brands and advertisers.

Currently, operating in Delhi-NCR, this startup has acquired over 200+ QSR’s, large food delivery players, and travel food services providers, they are working to scale this model to other cities. Kushang and Abhishek, Co-Founder, AdUrCup, substantiate by saying- we are geared to expand our operations and acquisition across two of the major cities, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad across the next 2 months. These are exciting markets with a very strong trend of eating out.     

On the advertising side, they have acquired some of the major brands, and are helping them design incisive solutions.   

The first round of investment in AdUrCup has come from the founders of Dineout, a startup which was recently acquired by Times Internet. Ankit Mehrotra, Sahil, Vivek, and Nikhil have invested in their personal capacity.

They also are part of the mentor panel at ACCELERATE, and have mentored this startups along with other senior professionals from Advertising industry and Technology major. 

AdUrCup, is part of ACCELERATE | ENTREPRENEUR, a business acceleration initiative by BW ACCELERATE, with very strong emphasis on the industry leader participation, mentorship & business access. At ACCELERATE, AdUrCup benefitted tremendously and improved from being an idea stage startup to reaching a point of sharp business longevity and reflection.

Ankit Mehrotra, co-founder of Dineout, commented saying “ Adurcup is an automated hyperlocal advertising tool! They are creating a 1st of its kind offline ad network already reaching more than 25,000 consumers per day across Delhi NCR and more than 5,000 consumers per day on trains. They are connecting the brand to the consumer at a fraction of the cost incurred through the digital platforms, and at a, moment when the consumer has spare time. This represents an exciting opportunity for brands to interact directly with their customers. “

Ashu Agrawal, Director, BW ACCELERATE added, saying “We are excited to see the progress AdUrCup has made. We believed in them and have faith, with right kind of mentors ACCELERATE has brought onboard, will serve as a strong foundation to this startup.”

He further added, it will be lovely to see this team-AdUrCup, expand into other cities soon.”

Founded on campus in January 2015, this startup by a driven team from IIT Kanpur is clearly working to make a significant impact on how this industry works.

Zomato, the online restaurant search engine is planning to expand its reach to over 40 countries by the end of 2016.

"We will enter around 40 countries by end of 2016 by adding about 18 countries by the end of the next year," shared Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato.

The company currently has presence in 22 countries and provides in-depth information of over 1.4 million restaurants.

Zomato is looking to enter to countries like Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, as these are reasonably large size (markets) and many of them don't have a large enough player.

"We have already started looking for people in all these countries but launching in any country takes around 6 months. We always start with hiring the country manager first and in general it takes about three months to find the right person and then all other things become easy," added Goyal.

When asked if Zomato was also looking for taking inorganic route for future growth, Goyal said: "We are very ad-hoc when it comes to inorganic growth. We are not hunting for acquisitions. It will be mainly organic growth."

The CEO further said India and UAE have been profitable for a long time. The other markets that have become profitable are New Zealand, Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, Qatar and Lebanon.

Going forward Zomato is planning to restructure the company into two key business verticals -- Consumers and Enterprise.

"We are planing to gradually restructure Zomato into two business verticals -- 'Consumers' side of business which will have apps for consumers that is Zomato app and website, and 'Enterprise' which will have products that are being made for restaurants," he added.

On the enterprise side there will be white-label apps, table reservation software called book, payments product called cashless and point of sale called base, he said.

Zomato has so far raised total funding to $225 million from four investors - Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital and Temasek.

Founded in 2008, Zomato employs over 3,000 people across 22 countries. Available on web and mobile, it provides restaurant information such as menus, contact details, pictures and user reviews.

Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery app, has raised USD 60 million in a fresh round of funding that is being led by Singapore investment company, Temasek with participation from existing investor Vy Capital.

The company will use the investment to further grow its new business verticals. This takes Zomato’s total funding to ~USD 225 million - it comes from a close set of only four investors - Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and now Temasek.

“We will use this round to make investments in our new businesses such as online ordering, table reservations, point of sales, and our newly launched Whitelabel platform. With this round, and with some of our markets turning profitable recently, Zomato is well capitalised for at least two years. We are also stoked to have Temasek partner with us, and are looking forward to building one of the largest food-tech companies in the world,” shared Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato.

Just last week, Zomato made strategic investments in Gurgaon-based Pickingo, and Mumbai-based Grab, both hyperlocal delivery players, to enable last-mile delivery for restaurants including dine-in-only restaurants that don't otherwise deliver.

Earlier today, Zomato also announced the launch of its Whitelabel Platform (zomato.com/whitelabel), a full suite of technologies for restaurants to run their business on the internet. The key feature on the platform is the ability for restaurants to launch custom-branded native mobile apps to help them connect with and engage their customers, and operate at internet scale.

In a bid to expand its portfolio, the restaurant discovery app, Zomato has announced the launch of its Whitelabel Platform (zomato.com/whitelabel), a full suite of technologies for restaurants to run their business on the internet.

The key feature on the platform is the ability for restaurants to launch custom-branded native mobile apps to help them connect with and engage their customers, and operate at internet scale.

“While speaking with a lot of restaurant owners, we realised that most of them do not have an app or digital presence and they want to harness the power and distribution of the internet and mobile to grow their business. And that there is no one single service provider for restaurants which can give them the entire suite of technologies required running an internet presence closely integrated with the operations of their business. We see this as an opportunity to have a larger impact on the food-tech ecosystem, as well as create a larger overlap between tech and food,” shared Ashish Goel, Chief of Product & Design, Zomato

The food-tech segment has seen a lot of action over the last year. As per a Tracxn report published in December 2014, the food-tech segment has seen a total investment of USD 1.2 Billion in 2014 alone.

While the dine-out and online ordering segments have seen a large chunk of this funding, internet-first restaurants have also seen their fair share of interest from investors.

“We are excited about the pace of innovation at Zomato. The bigger picture is increasingly becoming clearer to us and we are hoping that in a few months, we will be able to solve a large part of the pain points that users as well as business face in the industry,” added Pankaj Chaddah, Co-Founder, Zomato.

Currently, most of the internet-first restaurants primarily function on a 'no/own kitchen + own delivery + on-demand' model. The industry is seeing early signs of this concept germinating in certain urban clusters.

However, a vast majority of the industry is dominated by the unorganised sector of asset-heavy restaurants, and there is a huge untapped opportunity to get them online, build innovative services, and drive more delight to customers. Zomato's introduction of Whitelabel Apps aims to capture this opportunity.

Zomato Whitelabel Apps is a plug-and-play platform which will power a restaurant's digital identity with ease, enabling restaurants to spend more time focusing on their core business of food, translating directly to better dining experiences for users.

Zomato Whitelabel apps offer features such as targeted push notifications, real-time information and menu management, and marketing tools to merchants at their fingertips. The app is based on a subscription model that bundles Zomato’s existing restaurant management app – Zomato for Business – into each subscription for free.

Zomato Whitelabel Apps have already caught the attention of some top restaurant brands. Summerhouse Cafe in New Delhi, Miyabi Sushi in Dubai, and Shizuku Ramen in Melbourne are amongst the first 100 restaurants that have already signed up in the last week.

The Zomato Whitelabel Platform will be available to restaurants in all 22 countries Zomato is present in currently.

Zomato has announced that it has made strategic investments in Gurgaon-based Pickingo, and Mumbai-based Grab, both hyperlocal delivery players, to enable last-mile delivery for restaurants including dine-in-only restaurants that don't otherwise deliver.

Zomato has also partnered with Delhivery, the popular logistics startup that provides supply chain solutions to online and offline retailers.

Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato, said, “We have unequivocally the largest restaurant base in India and we will work closely with Pickingo, Grab, and Delhivery to improve the last-mile delivery experience for users placing orders online on Zomato. So far, restaurants have been delivering on their own, but with this partnership, we will be able to target restaurants across the country that don’t otherwise deliver. We are also launching our online ordering service in Dubai, Australia and South Africa later this month. Along similar lines, we are in conversation with hyperlocal logistics firms in other countries to ensure that we are able to provide a seamless and quality experience to our users there.”

Pickingo, which manages delivery for local merchants across six cities in India, has so far raised $1.3 million.

Grab (formerly Grab a Grub) is a hyperlocal logistics service connecting neighborhood stores, restaurants & online platforms to deliver their products to the end consumers in minutes.

Rahul Gill, Co-Founder and CEO, Pickingo, said, "This investment will not only infuse funds into the company but will also allow us to scale rapidly with Zomato's online ordering business, while also leveraging Zomato's strong relationship with restaurants across the country. We have already started working together to deliver from select restaurants in New Delhi, and we look forward to taking this partnership further.”

Pratish Sanghvi, Co-Founder and Director, Grab, said “Last mile logistics are a challenge for most merchants across India, especially restaurants, and we view this investment as a great opportunity to solve this problem using technology along with Zomato. We have already rolled this out with Zomato in Mumbai, and will extend to other cities in the next couple of weeks. These are exciting times for food-tech in India.”

Sahil Barua, Founder & CEO, Delhivery, said “The food-tech space in India is heating up, and we’re excited about this partnership with Zomato. Delivery logistics for restaurants have always been a challenge, and we believe the technology-first approach will help simplify operations for them, as well as enrich customer experiences.”

Since July 2014, Zomato has acquired 9 companies to further extend its global reach in the restaurant search space. This includes the acquisition of Urbanspoon, which gave Zomato a dominant position in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Zomato is making strides to move from being a search and discovery portal to a platform offering technology that helps merchants connect more effectively with customers, with the launch of online ordering, cashless payments, soon to be launched table reservations and a point of sale system.

Zomato, the restaurant search engine has appointed Surobhi Das as COO of the company, with cofounder Pankaj Chaddah promoted to lead new business across the globe, reported ET.

With these changes in the hierarchy level, Zomato is marking another instance of leadership changes entering new cities and boundaries.

According to an email sent to the employees by Deepinder Goyal, Das will lead media and operation functions such as human resource, finance and recruitment.

"Pankaj will ensure that we are able to find product market fit for all our new products as soon as possible and then move these businesses over to Surobhi as soon as he can," Goyal said in the email sent to company employees on June 30. "With this realignment, I will also have much more time to focus on product. I will aim to spend 80 per cent of my time with the product/design/engineering team." Chaddah will head new initiatives including food-ordering and table-bookings.

However, when Restaurant India called, Zomato found tight lipped in responding to any of the queries on the new announcements.

Das, an IIM-Ahmedabad graduate, quit her job at Bain consulting four years ago to join Zomato. Before being promoted as COO, she was part of Zomato's global growth team that identifies growth opportunities and executes strategy.

Rohit Chadda, Foodpanda India Managing Director may step down from the online food-ordering company or take on a different role.

Backed by German investor Rocket Internet, this is the second shake-up in management level after Housing.com in last few weeks.

Chadda headed Foodpanda's India operations between January 2013 and March, when the company appointed Saurabh Kochhar, CEO, Printvenue the another Rocket Internet-backed firm Printvenue, as its CEO.

"We still do not have clarity on Rohit's resignation... We are discussing it internally right now," Kochhar told to a national daily.

However, when called Chadda on the same, he said, “I need a day or two time to disclose all the changes as it is too early to comment anything.”

Foodpanda, with presence in over 39 countries, faces increasing competition in India's food-ordering and delivery industry, which industry reports peg at about Rs 95,000 crore.

Chadda, an IIM-Calcutta and Merrill Lynch alumnus, established Foodpanda India with Amit Kohli in 2012. Kohli quit the venture in 2013 and is currently with billionaire Dilip Shanghvi-led Sun Pharmaceuticals as general manager global network strategy. It is unclear if Chadda will be allowed to vest his stock in the venture or whether Foodpanda will buy his stake if he resigns.

Zomato, the global restaurant search and discovery app, has announced the introduction of its Foodie Index, which it is making available to developers globally as a simple API.

With the Foodie Index, Zomato uses its in-depth local restaurant information and user-generated content to calculate a score that indicates the quality of restaurants in a particular area.

“Users will now be able to zero in on apartments and hotels in neighbourhoods where they can enjoy the best dining experiences a city has to offer. With the Foodie Index API, we're making Zomato's rich content easily accessible and restaurant discovery incredibly easy. We’re constantly looking for ways to enrich dining experiences, and helping guide people to neighbourhoods that offer great food is a step further in that direction,” said Satyajeet Singh, VP Products & Marketing, Zomato.

Travel and real estate platforms will find this particularly useful, enabling them to provide information on the quality of dining options in a particular neighbourhood by leveraging Zomato's location-based Foodie Index.

Building on Zomato's exhaustive restaurant data, the Foodie Index aims to facilitate the decision-making process of people looking for apartments or hotels with great dining experiences just a short walk away.

Property portal CommonFloor is the first platform using the Zomato Foodie Index API. CommonFloor has made the Foodie Index available across India in their Locality Map section to help users identify ideal neighbourhoods based on great places to eat at around them.

Commenting on the same, Lalit Mangal, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, CommonFloor added, “Zomato's Foodie Index has the same intent and vision as we do of simplifying property decisions. The index provides information beyond just the nearby restaurants and lets a user know how a location fares when it comes to the quality and variety of restaurants in an area. This will be extremely beneficial for seekers of rentals and paying guests, and for people who like to compare neighbourhoods based on the restaurant options when deciding where to stay.”

By Sunil Pol

Localbanya, the Mumbai based online convenience store has today announced its entry into the ready-to-cook market in next 45 days.

“We are entering the ready-to-cook business in next 45 days with our services across Pune and Mumbai area,” shared Karan Mehrotra, Co-Founder, and CEO, Localbanya.

The grocery store is planning to deliver cut fruits and vegetables in Mumbai and Pune.

The online grocery retailer is initiating the move to offer convenience to working urban women while saving their time.

Localbanya is presently offering its services in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad.

India’s one of the largest Food Technology Company, Faasos has recently tied up with Citrus Pay for payments on their Mobile App.

The integration of Citrus Pay has made cashless payments seamless on the App, enabling reduced friction for the customer.

“Citrus has been working towards bringing more and more benefits to its customers. Thistie-up is another such step in that direction. We’re focused on making cashless payments a household practice. Faasos being a popular brand among the youth will also help us connect with the kind of users we cater to the best,” said Jitendra Gupta, Founder of Citrus Payment Solutions.

In order to encourage users to experience the Faasos App, Citrus is also enabling an interesting launch activity.

Faasos is giving Rs 100 to first time app users called Faasos Cash via the Citrus Wallet, which can be spent exclusively on ordering food from Faasos.

The offer is doing well and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that customers are literally lapping it up, shared the release.

The offer is in its initial stages but users can’t seem get enough of the free food that the Rs 100 gives them access to.

Paytm, India’s largest mobile commerce platform is tempting all foodies to dine out and indulge in a wonderful gastronomical affair by entering into a partnership with Dineout.co.in, India’s one of the largest table reservation service.

Through the Dineout loyalty programme users can enjoy the advantages of having a table reserved, discounts and additional savings in the form of cashback and loyalty points credited into their Paytm wallets.

“After speaking to many Dineout users we arrived at a loyalty program where our valued patrons can reap the benefits of sticking with a great service. Paytm was an obvious choice for this partnership owing to their wide consumer reach, and the ease of use of the service,” said Ankit Mehrotra, Co-Founder, Dineout.co.in. Loyalty points can be earned once the user books a table using the Dineout service.

By completing simple tasks such as writing reviews, inviting friends and checking-in while at the restaurant through the Dineout app, users earn loyalty points.

All these points are redeemable to Cash directly into a users Paytm wallet. Commenting on the partnership, Amit Lakhotia, Vice President, Paytm said, “Paytm and Dineout enjoy massive popularity and the loyalty programme that we have devised is a truly innovative concept for the benefit of our users. Paytm is committed to coming up with extremely innovative tie-ups to offer customers maximum benefit while using their digital wallets. Through this first-of-its-kind partnership, we aim to give food connoisseurs in India another reason to turn to technology for the most convenient and rewarding dining out experience till date.”

Zomato, the online restaurant guide and listing start-up has leased 1.2 lakh sq ft of office space in the One Horizon Center, one of the most expensive buildings in Gurgaon.

Zomato is planning to make this as its headquarters located on the Golf Course Road at Gurgaon's Sector 44.

The rental in the building is around Rs 135 per sq ft per month, for which the restaurant search engine will pay close to Rs 1.6 crore a month as rental.

Confirming the same news Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Founder, Zomato however didn’t disclosed the rentals.

"In this space, we are planning to accommodate about 750 people that we are going to hire. We wanted that much space and couldn't find any for a while. We only had three or four options and this is the best option we could rent," said Goyal.

Zomato has recently entered the world unicorn society and also entered into the food delivery and app services.