 "Finding the recipe for success")
At a time when food-related tech start-ups have started downsizing by sacking employees to manage costs better, Mobikon, a Pune- and Singapore-based start-up is swimming against the tide. The start-up is ramping up operations and plans to partner with 10,000 restaurants in India and South East Asia over the next two years; it will hit the road hit the fundraising highway in the next 2-3 months.
Mobikon, which recently raised an undisclosed amount taking the total fund raised to $5 million, builds software that caters to the whole spectrum of the restaurant business such as marketing, increasing engagement with customers, and reservations, among others.
The company, founded in 2009 by Samir Khadepaun and Salil Khamkar, currently works with 2,000 restaurants in India, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai.
When asked if the current mess in the food-tech start-up impacted Mobikon, Khadepaun said: “Thankfully we were never the part of the hype cycle and we never got carried away with it. We could have perhaps got carried away if the hype would have continued. The shake-up did not impact us much but what it has done to the industry impacts us.”
Khadepaun said that the sky-high valuations that the food-tech segment saw made several players enter the business. “Because of this competition restaurants now ask for freebies and freemium offers. Even when we go to restaurants they ask us for freebies,” he added.
Mobikon started as a services player, it was only in 2010 that the founders decided to focus on building a product and by 2011 managed to launch their platform targeted to the F&B industry.
“We never pre-planned to focus on F&B. We were focusing on the retail segment, but a lot of our customers in the initial period came from the F&B industry and hence the focus,” said Khadepaun. At present the revenue split between India and SEA is in the ratio of 50:50. Khadepaun feels that in future revenues from International market may go ahead of India.
Khadepaun also believes that what differentiates them with other start-ups is that they have not got into the crazy valuations and fund raising game. The company has investors such as Jungle Ventures, Spring Rock and Lion Rock, Life.Sreda and Qualgrow.
When it comes to competition, Khadepaun says that they are better placed having started early. “Some food tech start-ups did talk about getting into reservations, but we are much ahead. More importantly, players like Zomato and the likes do not share customer data with restaurants or the buying behaviour, but we do,” he added. So far Mobikon has 4 million diner profiles and has generated till now over 2.5 million reviews.
