iTiffin to enter 20 cities in next three years

Deliveroo rolls out a new feature to enable customers and riders to choose contact-free delivery

Award-winning delivery player Deliveroo has seen over 600 new restaurants join the platform since late January in Singapore, meaning more restaurants will be able to extend their sales through delivery.

Since March 1st, there has been a 50% jump in the number of restaurant sign-ups, compared to the previous month.

As restaurants reduce their dine-in capacity to maintain a safe distance between customers, customers will continue to be able to enjoy a wide range of restaurant food as more restaurants seek to serve customers in their homes through delivery.

Restaurants turning to delivery on Deliveroo include large chains, local family favourites, as well as quick takeaways, the majority of which did not perform delivery services until now.

“We are here to deliver for restaurants who want to carry on offering their amazing food to customers at home during this difficult time. We are working with restaurants to optimise their operations for delivery, and we are doing everything we can to make sure people still have access to the food they want and need,” shared Siddharth Shanker, General Manager, Deliveroo Singapore.

Deliveroo is the market leader in delivery-only kitchens, having launched the first such kitchen in the UK in 2016 as part of its ‘Editions’ programme.

Deliveroo operates over 100 kitchens across 16 sites in the UK. In Singapore, Deliveroo Editions was first launched in 2017, and currently operates 25 kitchens across three sites at Katong, CT Hub 2 and ALICE@MEDIAPOLIS.

 The company is now using this expertise to help guide restaurants as they make the transition from dine-in to delivery-only outlets during the period of the pandemic. Deliveroo is the only platform, for example, to publish detailed guidance on how restaurants can run delivery-only outlets safely, covering issues such as how to minimise contact, packaging and hygiene best practice. Deliveroo has extensive expertise in this area which it will share with restaurants across Singapore.

 Responding to the needs of restaurants at this challenging time, Deliveroo has also:

•Developed bespoke online marketing tools for restaurants to let customers know they are operating delivery services

•Established teams of people across the business to onboard and support restaurants who want to be able to deliver

•Developed our app to introduce ‘contact-free delivery’ so that restaurants can give confidence to consumers that delivery is conducted safely

•Shared expert advice and guidance on how to operate safely during the outbreak

•Engaged restaurants to understand ways of supporting their business

Ola-owned food delivery firm Foodpanda has acquired Holachef, the Mumbai-based food-tech venture. The acquisition will enable Foodpanda's entry into the cloud kitchen network and will help it to go deeper into the food-tech ecosystem.

Pranay Jivrajka, CEO of Foodpanda India, said, "At Foodpanda, we are committed to building for unique local tastes and palate choices of the Indian consumer. Through the Ola platform, we also have an unmatched access to over 150 million customers and an understanding of their preferences. We have been able to bring an enhanced experience for millions of customers over the past year. We aim to build India's largest cloud kitchen network that will be a major step in further elevating the food experience for our customers." 

"I am delighted to welcome the Holachef team on board and look forward to their joining us in our mission of delivering superior food experiences to a billion Indians," he further stated.

Post acquisition, Foodpanda will take over the business of Holachef including its kitchens and equipment. It will also bring onboard Holachef's employees. The founders of Holachef are set to join Foodpanda's leadership team.

Saurabh Saxena, Co-founder of Holachef, said, "Our mission with Holachef is to serve incredible food experiences to customers through kitchens with the highest quality & hygiene standards. We are delighted to join hands with Foodpanda, to accelerate our mission. We are thrilled to be part of Foodpanda's and Ola's passionate team that is truly changing the food experience for a billion Indians."

Online food delivery startup FreshMenu is in early talks with several private equity (PE) funds to raise nearly $75 million. The funding will be used by the Bangalore-based food-tech startup to fuel its expansion plans.

The firm is in talks with TPG, General Atlantic, Singapore's Temasek Holdings and domestic PE fund Kedaara Capital, among others, to dilute 25-30% stake. The process is being run by Kotak Mahindra Capital.

FreshMenu is looking for a valuation of $250 million in its new Series C round. The company was valued at $50 million in the Series B round in 2016.

The capital will be used by the company to set up more kitchens in markets like Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Gurugram and Mumbai. It is also planning to enter new markets such as Pune and Hyderabad.

Founded in 2014 by Rashmi Daga, FreshMenu currently operates 30 kitchens in Bengaluru and six in Mumbai. The startup has plans to add another 40 kitchens in Bengaluru, 20-25 in Mumbai and 40-45 in Delhi-NCR. It aims to have a total of 300 kitchens across India by 2020.

Gurugram-headquartered cloud kitchen startup InnerChef has raised around Rs 13 crore ($1.76 million) in a fresh funding round led by existing investor, Japanese venture capital firm-cum-accelerator Mistletoe.

Mistletoe is owned and funded by serial entrepreneur Taizo Son, the brother of Masayoshi Son, Founder and CEO of Japanese investment giant SoftBank.

Other investors that participated in the funding round include Singapore-based VC firm M&S Partners, along with a new Japanese investor Das Capital. While the other investors remain undisclosed.

In December 2017, Inner Chef had raised $610,000 from Ukraine-based investment firm Chernovetskyi Group and early-stage venture fund 500 Startups.

InnerChef was started by Rajesh Sawhney, Bal DiGhent and Sanjeev Singhal in 2015. It provides do-it-yourself food kits, ready-to-eat meals, and ready-to-cook meals and desserts.

Presently, the food-tech startup is operational in Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. It ships more than 100,000 meals per month.

Uber has launched its food delivery service in Bengaluru with delivery charges of just Re. 1. The regular charge is Rs. 25. Earlier this year Uber had launches its food delivery service in Mumbai and Gurugram.

In Bengaluru, the service will start in three southern residential areas – Koramangala, HSR Layout and BTM Layout. Uber has partnered with more than 300 restaurants to start with. The density of restaurants that UberEats covers is approximately 10 restaurants per sq. Km Paytm is the only payment method now, but the company will launch card payments soon.

"In rides, we created a new market with efficiency and grew the market. We have a consumer base we can tap into and have technology and data that we can dig into (for food delivery). We will bring more efficiency in the market with data about traffic density, traffic speed and delivery partner location," said Bhavik Rathod, head of UberEats India.

The choice of the localities, according to Uber, was made on the basis of restaurant density. The Koramangala region, said Rathore, has one of the highest number of restaurants in India. Swiggy and Zomato now deliver to many locations across Bengaluru.

Uber said all of its ride customers were potential UberEats customers. Uber is promising a 35 minute delivery. The UberEats app has more than 5 million downloads and was launched in Santa Monica, California, three years ago. Unlike Uber rides, consumers can place orders on the website too. 

Zomato is about to introduce a speedy service feature in its next update for the customers who are ill. The feature, which right now is being tested, will cater to ill customers who’d need food without any delay, on an emergency basis. The announcement comes as Zomato says it crossed the three million monthly orders milestone and is looking to add new meaningful features to get customers to order from its app more frequently. "You will soon be able to tell us that the meal you just ordered is for someone who's a bit under the weather...and we will do everything in our power to expedite your delivery, just so that you can get your chicken clear soup as soon as possible," the company wrote in a blogpost on Thursday.

While the feature will be available for all users, the company will advise users to not misuse it by asking them to treat it like an ambulance. The update will also allow customers to instruct restaurants not to include cutlery (almost always made out of plastic) in their order, thereby, promoting conversation of environment.

Despite this strong growth, the company says its cost of customer acquisition is still negligible, with its restaurant discovery arm still continuing to draw in new customers. In terms of retention, Zomato says that 65 per cent of new users on its platform will order at least once again from it within 12 months.

While reduced competition in India's food-tech space has led to returning sensibilities in terms of discounting, players such as Swiggy, Zomato and FoodPanda still have some way to go before they can turn profitable. For now, the fear is that global giants Uber and Google that have entered the space could kick off another price war. 

KFC, a Yum! Brands subsidiary has just launched one-click ordering system with the introduction of a physical and virtual KFC One-Click Button. The physical KFC One-Click button is a device that allows customers to order KFC menu items with a click. The device needs a one-time setup to connect to Internet and then to load one’s previously placed food order data. When pressed, the device sends a smartphone notification asking to confirm or cancel the order. In the virtual mode, the button is available on KFC app and website. One will need to register, log-in and click on the One-Click virtual button to get the order. Likewise, during the one-time setup, you need to save a default address which will be mapped to the nearest KFC outlet serving that delivery area. KFC said as of now, payment will be through cash on delivery and there is no additional cost for ordering food using One-Click Button. “The KFC One-Click button is a disruptive tech-innovation that makes ordering food super-easy and fun. With the One-Click we are creating a whole new-ordering experience in the QSR category and we are confident that it will drive engagement and give impetus to our online ordering,” said Lluis Ruiz Ribot, CMO, KFC India. In India, KFC runs 318 stores. Out of which 100 are company owned and 218 are franchise stores. 

Bengaluru-based foodtech startup EatFresh has shut down its food delivery service. As per an update on its website, EatFresh will no longer operate its on-demand meal delivery service, and will only cater to party or bulk orders in the future.

Founded by Rajiv Subramanian and Ashrujit Mohanty in 2015, EatFresh was a marketplace offering Indian and international cuisine on a daily rotating menu prepared by top chefs.

Operated by Chennai-based Ubiquitous Foods, EatFresh was operating almost 50 outlets in Chennai and Bengaluru.

The website stated, "Dear Customer, We no longer operate our on-demand meal delivery service, and will only cater to party or bulk orders in the future. We strived to create a differentiated offering, and hope that we leave you with some happy memories."

The reasons for suspending food delivery services are unknown. A mail sent to the startup was awaited response, at the time of publishing this article.

Last year EatFresh raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kalaari Capital in December 2015. The foodtech sector has witnessed a number of shutdowns. If we look at publicly available data, more than 18 startups had shutdown their operations in 2016 within the first five months.

In May 2016, ZuperMeal, home delivery food startup had shut down its operation just after raising its seed round of funding. Startups like Ola Cafe, Dazo, Peppertab and BiteClub have also shut down their operations. Swiggy, Foodpanda, InnerChef and Zomato are currently the key players in this segment.

Indian Food tech start-up 'Frshly' has launched its service offerings at the Bengaluru Central Railway Station and Chennai International Airport. Frshly is a first-of-its-kind automated retail marketplace that sells fresh and hot food from popular restaurant brands in the city for people who are on the move.

Currently offering six different cuisines with 30 combos, the brand promises unprecedented service quality, convenience and variety to its customers through its state-of-the-art dispensing machines. The brand is currently present across three cities Bengaluru, Chennai and Secundrabad.

Satish ChamyVelumani, CEO, Frshly, said, "We are delighted to bring a unique concept in India called Frshly, where in consumers have access to high quality food from multiple restaurants, takeaway-friendly packaging and quick food pick-up service. The technology in our systems keeps the food fresh and heats up before delivering the product which ensure hot and tasty food served all the time."

Sarish added, "We have operations in Bengaluru, Chennai and Secundrabad in India with about 16 stores at key IT parks and large IT companies and setup our stores at the Railway stations and airports. We will be launching in Singapore shortly in collaboration with SPRING, a Singapore Government Body under the Spring SEED (Spring Startup Enterprise Development) scheme. We have also set our vision to enter other Asia Pacific countries and Middle East Market by 2017."

Ramesh Narayanan, Chief Business Development Officer, Frshly, said, "With the help of IRCTC we are working with their main food plaza licensees to install Frshly across all A1 and A category stations in India. We are all set to initiate a revolution of unparalleled passenger satisfaction across the Indian Railways Network. Frshly can replace the traditional pantry coaches in railways and we are in talks with Indian Railways to make it a reality soon. We also wish to take our flagship product to the global railways. We aim to bring a fully automated "Vend - cafe" concept inside the train where all the food and beverage options will be made available at the push of a button. We have also come up with mobile App (iOS and Android) for passengers to order in the train."

Twigly, one of the online food brands that serves global cuisine to your doorstep, has expanded its services in Delhi.

Twigly intends to expand its customer base and is targeting 500 orders per day in the next few months.

Founded in August 2015 by Sonal Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi, Twigly emphasizes on-demand delivery of quality and fresh food. It works on an online food ordering model.

Twigly’s unique marketing and customer experience appeals to the modern customer and has led to repeats as high as 70 percent on a daily basis.

Sonal Minhas, Co-founder, Twigly, said, "We are excited to grow to food capital of India – Delhi, now. Our experience says that Delhi & NCR steals the deal when it comes to ordering food at the tap of your mobile. We are targeting to serve about 1000 orders per day in the next three quarters in Delhi. Our focus would be aimed at the quality of food and best in class ordering experience. Since we are not constrained by prime real estate, we are over investing in quality, people and hygiene. Within a short span of operation, we have earned a customer base of 10,000 people which in itself is an achievement, and we see it growing month on month. We aspire to scale-up to US$30 million in sales in the next 3–4 years."

Apart from its retail operations in sandwiches, pastas and pizza, Twigly plans to start a new product line of dips and shakes which would be available online and through modern retail format.

Continuing with his spree of supporting the startup sector, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus ofTata Sons has invested in a food-tech startup, IdeaChakki. After getting backing from one of India’s biggest business tycoon, company is planning to deploy funds in further expanding its reach, strengthening its in-house team and enhancing its technology.

The newly floated firm deals in providing digital video menu for restaurants and allows customers to gift food and beverage experiences anywhere in the world. Incepted by Monica Narula, Noopur Tiwari and Gunjan Mehrish, startup has also joined hands with startup funding platform Enablers to pump more funding in its next round.

Speaking about the expansion, Gunjan Mehrish, Co-Founder, IdeaChakki said that brand is currently operational at premium restaurants in Delhi NCR. The startup aims to expand its operations in India, apart from setting up an international office in Paris.

One of the biggest business tycoons of the country, Ratan Tata has been moved by the startup revolution of the country. Since last year, he has been one of the active angel investors in sartups. Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata had made approximately 13 investments in 13 startups. Startups that managed to attract the interest of the business tycoon include Bollant, Invictus Oncology, Moglix, Teabox, Cashkaro, Tracxn, DogSpot, UrbanClap, Abra, YourStory, Lybrate, Xiaomi and Snapdeal.

Gurgaon based Eatonomist has raised an undisclosed amount in seed investment from MCube Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd.

Operated by Fitmeal Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Eatonomist will use the capital for marketing and building brand. “We have recently revamped our website and with the funding, will soon launch an app as well,” said Anisha Dhar, co-founder, Eatonomist.

Founded in November 2014 by Dhar and Nupur Khanna, Eatonomist follows a full-stack business model wherein it controls the kitchens and delivery services. Its menu includes sandwiches and desserts besides a range of Indian foods.

“Our recipes are lab tested to ascertain the exact amount of nutrients,” said Dhar who is focused on calorie count deliveries.

Currently operating in Gurgaon, Eatonomist caters to corporate in the region. With a team of 20 employees, including five chefs, it claims to be doing more than 300 orders a day. It plans to expand its network to Delhi by the end of this year.

“Eatonomist has an amazing founder team that is hardworking, creative and believes in stupendous execution” said Pritpal Lakkha, head – business development, MCube Capital. MCube8, the incubation arm of MCube Capital, has been mentoring the startup.

MobiKwik, the independent mobile payments’ network has partnered with Domino’s and Burger King for cashless payments across their outlets in 200+ Indian cities.

With this association, MobiKwik now has enabled cashless payments across 8000 restaurants in India.

“At MobiKwik, we are driven with the vision of a cashless India and our association with these food-retail giants like Dominos is a strong step towards realizing that idea. We aim for 100 per cent growth every month through offline food and retail tie ups,” shared Upasana Taku, Co-founder, MobiKwik.

Adding his view on the same, S. Murugan Narayanaswamy, Senior Vice President Marketing, Domino's Pizza India, said “Technology today plays a vital role in delivering great customer service, and we invest heavily in technology to enhance our guest experience.”

Burger King, is an American global chain of fast food restaurants headquartered in United States. The company currently operates 48 stores in India, and is likely to open another 35-40 stores in 2016.

With this association MobiKwik transactions will be enabled at 48 Burger King outlets in 200+ cities.

Zomato, the food-tech player has been valued at about $500 million by brokerage HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India) Pvt. Ltd, about half the valuation at which the restaurant search firm raised its last round of funding in September.

HSBC has cited concerns surrounding Zomato’s advertisement-heavy business model, growing competition in the food ordering space and money-losing international operations for the lower valuation.

However, citing that the company will be profitable very soon, Zomato and its largest shareholder Info Edge (India) Ltd disagreed to the claim.

“We respectfully disagree with several of the points raised by the HSBC report. Zomato’s revenue has more than doubled in the last nine months and continues to head north at a good clip. Costs have been rationalized and burn is down by more than 70% from the peak. The company has plenty of cash and its unit economics are really good,” shared Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder & Executive Chairman, Info Edge.

HSBC’s estimate that Zomato is significantly overvalued comes amid increased scrutiny by investors of unicorns, or private companies that are valued more than $1 billion.

It also comes days after investors in Flipkart Ltd, India’s most valuable start-up, marked down the company’s valuation by 30-40%. To be sure, putting a value on these companies is neither simple nor absolute.

HSBC, in its 19 April report, initiating coverage of Info Edge (India), said that except for its job website Naukri.com, other businesses in the portfolio do not look promising. “We do a DCF (discounted cash flow) and value the (Zomato) business at about 50% lower to the $1 billion valuation,” HSBC analyst Rajiv Sharma said in the note to clients. “Zomato is present in 23 markets so early on and none is profitable, implies that to address both the investments in last mile delivery and losses in international operations fund raising will be a continuous phenomenon, suggesting current valuations don’t make much sense.”

However, a senior person at Zomato states that HSBC has not contacted the company for its views and “doesn’t obviously understand” the business well.

“Our investors are as bullish about Zomato as they were before. We are growing fast and are on course to becoming profitable as a company very soon. Beyond this, we do not want to comment on valuation markdown speculations of third parties,” added the spokesperson.

Restaurants on Zomato that pay for advertising account for a mere 6-8% of its total restaurant database and the nascent online food ordering business will take time to develop into a strong revenue stream, according to the HSBC report. “In our view, for Zomato.com to emerge as a market leader in the restaurant search space, it needs to focus on online food ordering and build last-mile delivery capabilities,” according to the report. 

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.

Uber is preparing to launch UberEats, its standalone food delivery app, in 10 US cities, reported The Wall Street Journal's Doug Macmillan.

Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Austin are among the cities Uber is bringing its food delivery service to, said a company spokesperson.

The first standalone app from the company since the launch of the general Uber app, UberEats will be live in the Apple App Store and the Google Play store by the end of March.

Uber has been testing the food-delivery service inside of its main app for the better part of the past 18 months, but it then launched as a standalone app available in Toronto, reported Wired.

Uber launched UberEats in Los Angeles in 2014 and has since expanded those services to New York City, Toronto, Austin, Chicago and Barcelona.

Uber partners with a couple restaurants each day to offer meals to its customers, which the company delivers via courier within just a few minutes.

Just like when you're waiting for your Uber to roll up, you can track your food's progress on your Smartphone as it travels to you. Drivers can choose whether they want to be an UberEats driver and they receive the ~$5 delivery fee from each UberEats order they deliver.

Zomato, the leading restaurant discovery and food ordering app, has partnered with hundreds of notable restaurants to enable millions of its users to book tables via the Zomato app and website.

Zomato had earlier launched their online ordering services in April 2015 to help simplify food ordering for customers, and has become the go-to app for ordering food online for home delivery.

Zomato’s table booking service is available at restaurants in multiple cities and languages. The feature, which has been seamlessly baked into the main Zomato app, allows users to make, modify, and cancel bookings in 3 simple steps at any given time of the day, even outside of the restaurant's operating hours.

The app also makes bookings stress-free by syncing them with calendars, and sending reminders prior to the booking time.

“We understand that restaurants want – and need – an integrated solution; that’s why we've spent countless hours designing an ecosystem, not just a single app. Zomato Book integrates with our other products to ultimately give restaurant managers a seamless solution for enhanced consumer delight. Hundreds of businesses around the world – ranging from small to 1000+ seat restaurants, and even theme park resorts – are already using Zomato Book.” said, Deepinder Goyal, Founder & CEO, Zomato

At present, over 500 establishments across 21 cities globally are using Zomato's table management and booking systems, and the number is growing by the day.

Restaurant partners include major multinational brand names such as GQ at the JW Marriott in Dubai and the Kempinski group in Dubai and Ajman, Hard Rock Cafe and The Hilton and The Conrad in Istanbul, Universal Studios Resort in the US, Le Meridien in Gurgaon, The Lalit Hotels across India, as well as local favourites such as Summer House Cafe in Delhi, Arbor Brewing Company in Bangalore, and The Bombay Canteen in Mumbai.

Zomato started work on its table reservations product in April' 15 when it acquired Nextable, a table management and booking platform based in North Carolina, USA. Nextable was rebranded to Zomato Book and integrated into Zomato's app and web products to enable a smooth and seamless table booking experience for customers.

TC DeSilva, Founder of Nextable, and SVP - Zomato Book said “We are so proud to ship Zomato Book to hundreds of restaurants across the world. Working with the Zomato sales team has been a rewarding experience and I am excited to see how far we can go with this amazing product that we have created over the last couple of years.”

Zomato Book, the business product that enables bookings, has been built in collaboration with restaurant owners. Samir Kuckreja (ex-President NRAI, ex-CEO Nirulas) has helped the Zomato team with his valuable insights to help develop a product which has been receiving great feedback from restaurant owners, hosts, managers, and waitstaff.

The most important problem that Zomato Book solves is training – restaurant staff can learn to use the system in a few minutes.

Zomato Book also gives restaurant managers a bird's-eye view of what's going on inside the restaurant in real time, enabling them to maximize their seating capacity, estimate how long it will be until a table frees up, and keep waitlisted customers notified on the availability of tables. This allows them to make their services more effective, and frees up resources that can be spent on creating memorable dining experiences for customers. Restaurants can also access data from a customer’s past visits to their restaurant, helping them personalize their customer's future dining experiences.

Since the soft release of Zomato Book in November, in about a month, restaurants have used the product to seat over 2.5 million guests. This number is set to increase tremendously in the coming months, as Zomato Book becomes a daily operational tool for thousands more restaurants worldwide.

To see and test how Zomato Book operates - find Summer House Cafe in Delhi on the Zomato app and give it a shot. Please make sure that you cancel your reservation after you test it - else, Summer House Cafe will be expecting you to show up and you won't and that's not cool.

By Nusra

At a time, when online ordering is growing at about 20-25 per cent, Gurgaon-based restaurant discovery and food ordering app Zomato has announced that it will be shutting down its online ordering service in Lucknow, Kochi, Indore, and Coimbatore.

Zomato launched its online food ordering business in April 2015, allowing its users to order food online from restaurants using the Zomato app, and had since expanded this offering to 14 cities across India. But, due to certain negative aspects on the growing business, the online delivery player planned to shut operations in these cities. Here are four major reasons:

1) The size of the market in these cities is small right now. 2) Zomato didn't see a significant increase in the order volumes in these few cities 3) The market is not yet entirely ready for the online food ordering business 4) The combined order volume in these 4 cities accounted for less than 2% of Zomato's total order volumes

"We are shutting down the ordering business in Lucknow, Kochi, Indore, and Coimbatore. The size of the market is in these cities is small right now and is growing with time. We will re-launch when the time is right. In the meanwhile, we will continue to offer the best content (including scanned menus) to ensure that foodies are able to find and order great food,” shared Pankaj Chaddah, Co-Founder, Zomato.

Despite Zomato's recent marketing efforts, including television ads, it didn't see a significant increase in the order volumes in these few cities. These smaller cities are not yet entirely ready for the online food ordering business, but once they are, Zomato will reconsider its strategy.

The combined order volume in these 4 cities accounted for less than 2% of Zomato's total order volumes. Overall, Zomato's online order volume is growing at a healthy 40% month-on-month. Less than 5% of Zomato's orders are discounted, making Zomato one of the few tech startups to not use negative gross margins to grow the business.

Zomato has 75,000 restaurants listed on its platform in India. Foodies can use the online ordering feature to order from 12,000 of them. Zomato also works with delivery partners Grab and Delhivery to offer delivery from restaurants which do not otherwise deliver food.

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

RI Bureau

Swiggy, online food ordering and delivery platform is sending traditional sweets, greeting cards and colourful Kites along each of their deliveries. While different regions in India have different names of this festival but the core of the festival is to share happiness. Like Pongal is the harvest festival in Tamil Nadu, Lohri in North India, Sankranti in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and lot of other places.

It is distributing sweets as per the preference of the eight cities where they are currently operational. For instance tilguls (sweet made of Sesame and Jaggery) being distributed in Mumbai, Edlubella (sweet made of Sesame and Jaggery) in Bangalore and other cities.

In Bangalore, Swiggy is distributing Sankranti special Sesame Jaggery (locally known as Ellu Bella) in these locations (Jayanagar and Basavangudi). In Chennai, they are sending cards wishing our customers on the occassion of Pongal. In Mumbai and Pune they are sending tilguls with their deliveries. And in Hyderabad, Swiggy has tied up with the some of the famous restaurants such as Agra Sweets, Agrawala Sweets, Akshaya Swagruha Foods, Almond House, B. Bicha Reddy Sweets, Keshav Reddy Sweets, Bikanervala Sweets etc and promoting assorted Sankranti special sweet boxes

MobiKwik, mobile wallet company has introduced 'Bill Push', which is being billed as the next big innovation in offline mobile payments space, reported Business Line.

This new mechanism which is being rolled out in dine-in restaurants and retail chains across India -- is a significant level up from the current SMS/OTP approach launched earlier by MobiKwik with Big Bazaar, Cafe Coffee Day and Archies etc.

"Bill Push is going to improve payment experience for customers as it provides an enhanced value proposition", said Bipin Preet Singh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, MobKwik.

This mechanism is introduced initially in few dine-in restaurants in the Capital and would soon extend it to Big Bazaar and other retail chains, Bipin Preet Singh said.

Elaborating on the new payment mechanism with an example, Bipin said one time password (OTP) or SMS will no longer be required for processing payments. In the case of dine-in restaurants, the diner mentions he/she wants to pay with MobiKwik and passes his/ her mobile number (registered with MobiKwik) to waiter/manager. The waiter/manager enters it in the POS machine. The diner then gets the complete bill pushed to MobiKwik app as a standalone notification.

Bipin said that the user would have to just click on 'Pay Bill' tab on the notification and the bill is instantly paid.

While the OTP process takes anywhere between 10-15 seconds and is fast by itself, 'Bill Push' payments can now happen within five seconds.

There is an added benefit for the customers of the entire Bill saved in smart phones for safe keep and reference at a later time.

"We often tend to misplace paper-based bills. This 'Bill Push' will address that challenge", Bipin said.

Foodpanda, online food ordering platform has tied up with Hyderabad-based Paradise, the largest Biryani house in South India. Started in 1953 as a modest cafe, Paradise now has nine outlets in Hyderabad and three in Bangalore.

This partnership will enable customers to now order Paradise Biryani on-line apart from other cuisines prepared by them. It is the first time that Paradise has entered the e-commerce space.

"We are extremely happy to announce our partnership with Paradise. We are working hard to ensure that we partner with restaurants that offer our customers with a smooth and seamless order processing and a great delivery experience. With this tie-up our customers can now order Paradise's range of cuisines at their homes and offices," said Saurabh Kochhar CEO of foodpanda.

Sameer Bhasin, Paradise COO said their association will enable the restaurant to reach out to a larger audience. "Also, foodpanda's focus on customers and service delivery has encouraged us to tread on the e-commerce path," he stated.

RI Bureau

Zomato the restaurant discovery and food ordering app, has introduced New Year's Eve themed Collections across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa and Chandigarh will help people mark the arrival of 2016 with some of the best parties.

The Collections carry information of the parties happening in restaurants and hotels in 9 cities in the country. Each of the event listings are linked to the restaurants page on Zomato to ease the decision making process.

Zomato introduced the Collections feature in May 2014 and has since helped millions of its users discover great places to eat at. With the Collections feature, Zomato turned popular theme-based searches into bite-sized lists of restaurants that address specific use-cases. Collections on Zomato cover everything from Romantic Dining to Late Nighters, Breakfast Places, Pet-Friendly Restaurants, and many more.

“Figuring out where to go on New Year's Eve can be an extremely daunting task. Through these curated Collections we want to provide the locals with the best options in the city to end the year on a good note. Based on the response to our NYE Collections last year, we extended the Collections beyond Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune to cover more cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa and Chandigarh as well this year,” said Pramod Rao, SVP Growth, Zomato.

Recently, Zomato has also introduced a host of new features and performance improvements to make its search as well as online ordering experience even better. Zomato also introduced custom Collections which let the users create their own Collections which they can share with their friends and followers.

RI Bureau

Swiggy, the online food ordering portal backed by SAIF Partners, has introduced a unique number masking feature on their delivery platform.

Number obfuscation is a feature ensuring that the phone numbers of the end customers remain undisclosed to the delivery staff.

Swiggy uses cloud telephony services which enable customer number obfuscation – thereby securing the information of consumers.

This is done through technology which ensures complete safety and confidentiality of the customer’s mobile numbers.

The calls are routed to a third party server which triggers a conference call between the delivery executive and the customer. The customer can use the Live Tracking feature (available on web as well as app) to track their order and can also avoid the need to call the DE.

Number masking was a phenomenon that was implemented first by the cab aggregators.

The online major has also tied up with Better Place to ensure the background verification of the delivery executives is completed before onboarding. The agency verifies critical information such as temporary and permanent address, ID verification along with criminal and court records of the DEs.

Swiggy has proactively taken measures to ensure customer privacy and ensure seamless and secure delivery of food.

With a significant increase in demand for food and ordering of meals at late hours, Swiggy is able to reassure its patrons by providing a secure delivery platform at all times.

Nusra

For every diner, the experience and time spent is the key to a satisfying outing whenever one ventures out to a restaurant. Imagine going out to a restaurant with your loved ones and having to wait for a table or later coming to know that a better experience was waiting for you at another restaurant which you were not informed of. You would naturally be annoyed and irritated.

Loofre which started it service in Delhi expands its horizon serving the six more major cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh.

With over 700 outlets under their service, Loofre.com turns out to be one of the largest restaurant merchant aggregator in the country.

“Our experience and expertise in the merchant aggregation space has given us the edge and has propelled us to a leadership position. With a young, robust and technologically advanced team a new history is being written in the field in the merchant sales solutions,” shared Rohit Mahajan Managing Partner, K5 Brand Solution. This festive season, Loofre.com a start-up online Table Reservation Services by K5 Brand Solutions, India’s largest restaurant merchant aggregator, has identified the service gap and promises to change the experience dramatically.

This is a big-leap forward from the traditional table reservation service and being interactive will connect restaurants and diners to discover the best offers or discounts in nearby locations along with the added advantage of personalised hospitality according to the diner’s need, cuisine, budget and preferred ambience.

K5 Brand Solutions is undoubtedly India’s largest merchant aggregator of dining offers and manages the Dining, Wellness and Online programmes of India’s largest banks like- ICICI (Culinary Treats),  HDFC (Food Fiesta), HDFC Times Card and SBI Cards, and is proud to have a working relationship with a network of over 5000 retail food joints across the country. In addition, K5 Brand Solutions had earlier even managed the dining alliances of websites like; EBay, Taggle and koovs.  

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In a bid to scale up business operations and further sustain its market leadership, Mumbai based online food curation and delivery service provider Holachef, has appointed Rohit Sharma as its new Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSO).

With over 21 years of rich and diverse hospitality sector experience, Rohit joins Holachef from his previous stint at Tata Starbucks as Director of Supply Chain.

“I am excited to join Holachef and be part of the disruption that is a foot in the traditional food services industry. This clearly means newer challenges as well as immense possibilities for us at Holachef.  Automation and supply chain process efficiency will be critical areas of focus for me. I look forward to working with the extremely passionate team at Holachef as we work towards our mission to be the extended kitchen for consumers across cities.” said Rohit Sharma, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Holachef

His other stints include work with Nirulas Corner House Pvt Ltd, Devyani International Ltd, Domino’s Pizza and Taj Mahal Hotel in various capacities. 

Rohit Sharma’s experience of handling end-to-end supply chain portfolio, building competitive market positioning for several food and hospitality brands is expected to fuel Holachef’s focus towards profitable and sustainable growth. While being the Senior Supply Chain Director at Tata Starbucks, Rohit brought key attributes of strategic and tactical leadership towards growth of the business.

As the new Chief Supply Chain officer, Rohit would be responsible to look after the entire food preparation infrastructure, supply chain automation, sourcing, quality control, food process management and expansion of food categories at Holachef. His charter would also include enhancing revenue growth and cost savings through strategic process improvements, savings initiatives, leveraging unutilized capacities, development of transportation networks among others.

Speaking on the announcement, Co-Founder & CEO Saurabh Saxena said “Rohit has an excellent track record of building successful teams and driving tangible results through streamlining processes,” His experience with multiple high growth organisations and exposure to technological driven supply chain management will be invaluable to Holachef at this juncture of high-speed growth.

Holachef continues to focus on product innovation and critical talent hire in its aspiration to create a food curation category and growth. The company bagged an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata in August 2015 and earlier also raised a Series A funding of INR 20 Crore in a round led by Kalaari Capital in June 2015.

By Nusra

Chennai based Ubiquitous Foods has raised undisclosed amount in funding from Kalaari Capital, which earlier invested $5 million in Series A funding in 2013.

With this investment the company has raised a total of over Rs 25 crore.

“We are planning to scale the operations in Bengaluru and Chennai over the next three four months before entering Pune and Hyderabad,” shared Rajiv Subramanian, Founder Eatfresh.

The funds will be used mainly for expansion of its internet-first restaurant brand Eatfresh, which was launched this August.

Eatfresh is a full-stack player offering Indian and international cuisine in a daily rotating menu across 20 locations in Bengaluru.

"We plan to have 50 distributions hubs between Bengaluru and Chennai," added Subramanian.

Delhi based Clicktable, the cloud-based platform for streamlining front desk management for restaurants has brought on board 50 restaurants on its software within just two months of launch.

The capital city’s most popular food joints and cafes like Rodeo, Hops n’ Brew, Café 9, Amber, The Pink Room, Mahabelly and Warehouse Café etc. are now on Clicktable to better manage their business operations and enhance their engagement with consumers. 

“Getting associated with some of the best restaurants in the city in such a short span and providing them with scalable real-time solutions to optimize their businesses is the first major milestone in our growth path,” shared Varun Gupta, Founder & CEO, Clicktable.

After covering the capital city, the group is eyeing Mumbai and Bengaluru markets and eventually will target pan-Asia expansion.

“By mid-Q1 2016, we also plan to release our consumer app for diners which will enable them to reserve tables on a real time basis – the platform will be quick, intuitive and engaging for the customers. At this time the restaurants will find the added utility of our products,” added Gupta.

Clicktable leverages a robust technology infrastructure to assist in real-time business management while maintaining operational simplicity. It helps restaurateurs to evaluate their business with a new perspective while bridging the communication gap with the diners.

The Clicktable consumer app will target cosmopolitan diners in large urban cities. It will enable them to conveniently search for tables and make reservations or even get updates on their waitlist status on a real time basis.

Nusra

Gurgaon-based Bite Club, a marketplace for chef prepared meals, has successfully raised a Pre-Series A round of funding from growX ventures. The Phoenix Fund via Enablers, and existing investors Powai Lake Ventures also participated in the round. The company plans to utilize the fresh round of capital infused to expand its footprint in Delhi-NCR and introduce more product categories.

Started in November 2014, Bite Club acts as a marketplace connecting chefs and consumers. They have a daily changing menu that customers can order from via their mobile and web app. The food is prepared by a curated community of home chefs, amateur chefs, and professional chefs. The firm has already served over 1,00,000 meals within one year of its inception, and is currently delivering almost 1000 meals a day.

Commenting on this fresh round of funding, Prateek Agarwal, the CEO and Founder, Bite Club said, "At Bite Club, we are chasing a vision of replacing home cooking. We have had a fabulous first year of operations and recently hit the milestone of serving 1,00,000 meals in the city. We’re blessed to have some of the best home-chefs on our platform relentlessly working to delight our consumers with wholesome meals every day of the week."

The food delivery platform brings an interesting mix of offerings in the gourmet & comfort food segment across regional Indian & World cuisines within the price range of Rs. 100-300 per person. Carrying certain traits of both a restaurant and a Tiffin service, Bite Club is not conventionally one or the other. At present, it is on an expansion spree in the entire Delhi NCR region.

“We are excited to be investing in Bite Club. We believe in the company’s vision to make incredible home cooked food accessible to everyone. It’s a truly unique business model with a strong focus on providing wholesome meals at great value. I am a huge fan of Bite Club and have been averaging 3-4 meals a week for months now. With the current round of funding, we looking to go deeper into the current market, improving efficiency, building a strong platform for growth and introducing newer products” said Ashish Taneja, Managing Director at growX ventures.

Earlier this year, BiteClub had raised an angel round from Powai Lake Ventures with participation from angels including Aneesh Reddy (Capillary Technologies), Ashish Kashyap (Goibibo Group) and Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners).

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

foodpanda, India’s largest online food ordering platform proposes to associate with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the Indian railways.

The association will enable consumers to order meals of their choice through foodpanda’s aggregator model, and allow them to order from a wide variety of cuisine options.

To ensure that food reaches consumers in the best condition, foodpanda will deploy its own delivery fleet to fulfil all deliveries.

Speaking about the association, foodpanda CEO Saurabh Kochhar, Said, “Foodpanda is an innovative business model which caters to an important consumer need. Our association with IRCTC will be an offering which addresses a huge consumer need prevailing for years. For long, consumers had limited food options to choose from while travelling with Indian railways but the newly launched e-catering service by IRCTC (approved by Ministry of Railways) is set to change the way Indians eat while travelling. We are excited to begin action with the Delhi station by December and are looking forward to extending this offering to other stations like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time.”

The pilot of this proposed association is being planned to be launched at the New Delhi Railway station and after successful roll out in the metro city, the service will be extended to more cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in due course of time.

he customers will have the choice to order meals at-least 2 hours in advance of the travel. The delivery will be aligned to the train arrival time at the station and consumers can pay for the order in advance online or make on the spot cash payment as per their convenience.

Robin Kalita, Director, Catering Services, IRCTC, “At IRCTC, it has been our endeavour to extend best possible services to our passengers. Food forms a very important part of the travel experience and IRCTC takes immense care to offer healthy and hygienic food to its travellers on-board. With progressing times, we aim to offer wider choices to our consumers and are extremely thankful to foodpanda to have offered partnership with us. We are happy that we will be able to offer wider food choices to our consumers with this association and once our pilot project is successful, we will extend the service to more locations.”

RI Bureau

Delhi based DealMonk is planning to expand its services to over 12 cities by December 2016.

The real-time restaurant deals platform, which currently offers services in Delhi-NCR with over 250 active merchants and 1,000 application users, is also looking at adding more than 5000 merchants across Delhi-NCR in the coming three months.

"Our immediate goal is to develop Delhi-NCR as a replicable model, scale up infrastructure, acquire new customers, build the sales and marketing teams and expand into 12 Indian metros by Dec-2016," Aditya Jindal, CEO, said in a statement.

DealMonk is currently working with restaurants and is looking to expand into other sectors such as theatres, hotels, gyms, and resorts among others in the coming months. DealMonk is targeting a market of around $1 billion in India over the next 5 years.

The platform helps connect restaurants with diners who are undecided about where to dine at that point in time and want to avail discounts.

The platform uses technologies like Big Data and predictive customer analytics to drive sales and marketing. The company said that its analytics team is building predictive analytics models using Big Data to achieve the customer segmentation strategies based on behavior, demographics, psychographics, and geography.

"Using the insights from Big Data driven customer analytics, restaurateurs can pitch customized deals in a way that they think is the best to attract and retain consumers. And conversely, diners get the best deals, which suit their needs of the hour," the company said in a statement.

The platform enables restaurateurs to publish real-time deals to optimize lean hours and attract nearby customers. Further, iIt provides customers access to marketplace of real-time (live) deals in nearby locations and large variety of restaurateurs from different sectors.

Restaurateurs create the deals and allure customers, while customers get personalized deals saving their time, money and unwarranted struggle on Google, the company said.

The free app serves the consumers with discounts that are available "Right Here Right Now" which is scarce to find on other discount platforms. Its real-time concept makes it extremely easy for app users to find discounts by providing nearby discounts that are available at that exact point of time. The consumer just books a table for free and gets a discount at the restaurant within minutes.

Mobikon, leading marketing platform for the F&B industry, announced its tie-up with BPI Bank, the leading Bank in Manila to offer customer engagement platform to restaurants. The tie-up would help Mobikon to reach out to 300 plus restaurants and strengthen Mobikon’s presence in Phillippines. Mobikon is also in talks with other leading banks in India and other markets.

BPI Bank would provide Mobikon’s platform and analytics dashboards to restaurants which help BPI bank to gain higher share of mind amongst its merchants and position the bank as a highly contemporary leading bank in Philippines. Mobikon is projecting revenues of upwards of USD 500 K with successful execution of this partnership. Merchants will benefit from this offering as they would be able to drive more revenues, improve customer experience and build their own CRM.

“We are pleased to have this inventive partnership between Mobikon and BPI Bank. This is going to be a game changer in the Philippines market at many levels and is already influencing similar partnerships in the whole region. The best part about this partnership is its strong win-win proposition for everyone involved. It brings a large part of F&B industry to a new level with leading banks facilitating easy adoption of Mobikon’s modern technology solution for delivering enhanced dining experience”, shared Anuj Jain, Vice President - Asia Pacific, Mobikon.

Mobikon is on an expansion spree in South East Asia to become a market leader. This year, Mobikon has raised close to $ 4 million from Jungle Ventures, Life.Sreda & Qualgro. It has also strengthened its market reach in Singapore this year by acquiring its closest competitor ‘Triibe’, a customer feedback platform in SEA markets. Now it is tie-up with the leading bank of Manila has given Mobikon operations in the region a big boost towards market leadership position. Mobikon is looking at similar tie-ups in India and other markets in the near future and also exploring strategic partnerships with mPOS & cloud POS companies.

Mobikon is expecting 200 per cent growth by the end of this financial year.

“This deal is a breakthrough for us. We will be looking at similar partnerships as we scale in different regions. When everyone is going after discounting, physical acquisitions and spending more dollars, Mobikon is going a smarter way of partnerships and would use the same model to further scale in India and other regions besides Manila. These tie-ups are in line with our expansion plans across S.E. Asia and would provide a value proposition to merchants”, said Samir Kadhepaun, CEO of Mobikon.

RI Bureau

EazyDiner, in collaboration with India’s top hoteliers and restaurateurs announces its entry into Bengaluru.

EazyDiner launched its service in Delhi earlier this year in January and has grown close to 40X in the last 10 months.

This online reservation platform has booked 15,000+ diners in October alone, up from the 400 diners in January.

The platform also provides a customized experience to its diners through its expert concierge service, which allows diners to call a trained dining concierge team @ 786 100 4444, who not only provide recommendations but also assist with bookings at even hard-to-get-into restaurants.

The EazyDiner platform helps a diner get bookings at their favorite restaurants with great deals and earn EazyRupees with every reservation. Partner restaurants include some of India’s best restaurants and range from award winning stand-alone restaurants to top five star hotels. EazyTrends is a celebration of food and beverage trends and how things are evolving in this dynamic space and fresh content is produced daily.

Sue Reitz, Managing Director of EazyDiner commented, “We are very excited with the growth that we have seen in the last ten months in Delhi NCR & Mumbai. The response to EazyDiner has been phenomenal and we are pleasantly surprised as to how people have embraced a new way to make restaurant reservations. Not only are we bringing in a dining revolution but we are also filling up restaurants like never before as diners continue to save substantial money and time, every time they dine through us."

Adding to the same, Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director, DSG Consumer Partners said, more than ever, diners are choosing where to dine and making bookings based on information accessed on their mobile devices. Eazydiner is now bringing their successful product to Bengaluru after testing the market in Delhi since January and launching in Mumbai in July. EazyDiner has significantly enhanced its product and services since its initial launch incorporating the learnings from each market, diners and restaurants. EazyDiner works very hard everyday for its diners and restaurants to make the dining out experience easier and more fun.” Ash Lilani, Managing Partner & Co-founder of Saama Capital said, “EazyDiner is perfect for Bengaluru which is a city with a strong culture of food and dining out.  The city has a high concentration of restaurants per capita as well as a strong understanding of leveraging technology for efficiency. I expect the adoption rate for the app in the city to have a lot of momentum very quickly.”

Founded in late 2014, EazyDiner is India’s first online restaurant reservation platform curated by India’s leading food critic Vir Sanghvi. EazyDiner will launch in Chennai later this year followed by Pune.

Chennai based Watscooking.com which was started by Mohamed Ismail in February 2015, is targeting at bringing over 10000 home chefs in next three years.

“We plan to enlist around 10000 home chefs in next 3 years with more than 3 lakh registered users in all tiers 1 and tier 2 cities of India,” shared Ismail.

The company is also planning to expand its wings to other cities and might as well target countries like the US, UK and gulf countries where there is considerable numbers of Indians and who look for home cooked food.

Growing at the rate of 30 per cent per month, Watscooking, competes with Sanjeev Kapoor backed ZuperMeal, CyberChef, ITifiin, HolaChef amongst others.

In the last few months, home-cooked space has really heat up the Indian food service market with new and innovative platforms coming up getting a good investment from the industry people.

National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) is planning to organise a technology-focused symposium – TechIt.

The symposium will be an open platform for restaurateurs and food service operations.

The platform is aimed at giving restaurant owners access to latest technology options and services.

"The idea is to bring all technology solution providers and restaurant owners under one roof to understand how technology can help the restaurant business grow," shared Riyaaz Amlani, President, NRAI and MD, Impresario Entertainment Hospitality.

The event is scheduled to be held on October 26th in New Delhi.

"In today's world, technology has redefined the food industry. With the ecosystem getting wider and more dynamic, food technology is now the binding force, enabling restaurants to be more efficient, increase profitability and customer delight," added Ankit Mehrotra, Co-Founder, Dineout. Customer focus, new revenue areas, efficient operations and growing investment in the food tech space are some of the topics to be deliberated during the event.

On Monday, MobiKwik Independent mobile payments network said it has tied up with OYO Rooms online hotel aggregator and Zomato online food ordering application.

"Cumulative research indicates that online platforms will occupy 15-20 per cent of the total spend of the Indian economy by 2020. Our tie ups with category leaders such as OYO Rooms and Zomato positions us well to leverage that wave," said MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh.

By the end of the year, OYO has 10,000 plus rooms in 1,000 partner hotels across 45 plus cities in India and aims to expand to 2,000 hotels in 45 cities. Zomato is a restaurant search and discovery app, providing in-depth information for over 1.4 million restaurants across 22 countries.

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Food tech start-up Dazo has decided close its services after almost a year of its inception.

Started in October 2014, with the name Tapcibo, the company used to aggregate meals from partner restaurants and took care of last-mile delivery to ensure superior customer experience.

Started by ex- Red Bus employees, Sashank Shekhar Singhal and Monica Rastogi, the group got investors like Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal, Google India chief Ranjan Anandan, Commonfloor’s Sumit Jain, TaxiForSure’s Aprameya Radhakrishna and Alok Goel, the former Freecharge chief executive who recently joined venture capital firm SAIF Partners after Freecharge was bought by Snapdeal and Ashish Dev kapur owner of Yo! China and DimsumBros. In April, Tapcibo was rebranded as Dazo and raised an undisclosed amount from these industry executives. According to Singhal, the team has decided to work on a different project.

“As a team we’ve decided to move over this business and we’ll be working on a new product. I hope we were able to serve you well,” added Singhal.

The company had initially started out as an Internet-first kitchen and subsequently pivoted to an aggregator of select restaurants. Besides, getting lots of investments on board the model doesn’t seems to be scalable as compared to the base kitchen format as last week it was in news that SpoonJoy is scaling down its operations in Bengaluru and stopped operations in Delhi.

FoodPanda is revoking registrations of over 500 restaurants every month as it aims to stabilise operations hit by frenetic growth and upheaval in top management, reported by ET.

The company has been under fire for alleged booking of fake orders by restaurants on its network, even as its Berlin-based parent is actively looking to divest its stake said people.

"It would be an anomaly to say our database is 100 percent clean now. We are 99 percent clean," said Saurabh Kochhar, CEO of FoodPanda, who took charge in January this year, following the acquisition of TastyKhana in November 2014.

Since then, Kochhar claims the company has doubled the number of restaurants on its platform to 12,000. "There are always 1% of vendors, sellers, restaurants and drivers in ecommerce industry who try and game the system," he said. Kochhar further said that the "investors are solidly behind the company".

FoodPanda was under fire for irregularities in operations at some restaurants on its platform. The issues raised include misusing discount offers and creating fake orders. The problem, according to people aware of the developments, was caused when restaurants were listed without physical verification. "For ecommerce businesses in India it's very important to verify a listed vendor in person," said one of the sources.

Kochhar claims to have now installed systems which detect IP address and location of restaurants if they try to book their own orders. "We first counsel and warn them, if they repeat the behaviour, we ban them," he said.

Foodpanda has also set up a quarterly audit to check anomalies. Kochhar said that he deactivates anywhere from 500 to 1,000 restaurants a month as part of the clean-up drive.

Renowned food critic and popular restaurant business blogger Sourish Bhattacharyya has come on board with EazyDiner.com as Lead Critic for Delhi-NCR.

Bhattacharyya joins a stellar team headed by Vir Sanghvi; comprising Kalyan Karmakar and Roxanne Bamboat in Mumbai & Priyadarshini Nandy and Ipsita Basu in Bengaluru.

“It’s a great feeling to be working under Vir again. It was he who encouraged me to start writing about food seriously when he was Editor of the Hindustan Times.” Recalling those early days of food writing, when the India restaurant business was way down the evolutionary ladder, Bhattacharyya adds: “Vir set the ground rules for us then and it is heartening to see that those fundamental principles — honest reporting and unbiased ratings — continue to form the core of EazyDiner’s editorial philosophy. This gives me a sense of continuity and I look forward to this opportunity to hone my skills as a food critic”

With this new role, apart from reviewing restaurants and bars in Delhi-NCR, he will map food and beverage traditions and trends in the national capital and its neighborhood.

A journalist with 30 years of professional experience behind him, Bhattacharyya is a freelance restaurant critic and Op-Ed page food columnist for India Today Group’s Mail Today newspaper.

He’s also the founding Contributing Editor of the hospitality industry B2B magazine, BW Hotelier; blogger at www.indianrestaurantspy.com; and a founder member of the Delhi Gourmet Club.

In the past, he has served as Executive Editor, Mail Today; Editor, HT City, the lifestyle section of the Hindustan Times; and National Features Editor, The Indian Express. At Mail Today, he also edited the dining out guide, Delhi-NCR’s 101 Finest Restaurants, from 2011 to 2013.

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.