LimeTray: Restaurants' best friend in the cloud

Many restaurants get new customers from discovery platforms such as Zomato, Swiggy or Foodpanda. But when it comes to staying in touch with their old customers or drive repeat orders, they have little help.

LimeTray, which makes restaurant software, is helping restaurants leverage technology. For instance, it has a channel integrator that merges orders from different food aggregators into a single tab. It helps restaurants take online orders, bring back customers with automated marketing campaigns (it triggers an SMS if a customer doesn’t order in a month) and aids customer feedback using a chat bot.

"The fill rate is very poor as feedback forms are static but customers are used to messaging. Based on their answer, the chat bot changes the questions," says Akhilesh Bali, co-founder & chief executive officer (CEO), LimeTray.

The firm, which received an undisclosed amount in funding from JSW Ventrues last week, has integrated a lot of products into a single suite and offers three packages to restaurants: Starter (at Rs 3,000 a month), turbo (at Rs 6,000 a month), and super-charger (at Rs 6,000 a month). A restaurant can begin with a starter pack (online ordering, billing), and upgrade if it finds value.

The turbo pack offers feedback, CRM and loyalty products while the super-charger provides a restaurant with an app which is useful for a chain with 10-15 outlets in a city.

"Ìt is not enough for a restaurant to find new customers. They need to bring back old customers and drive repeat orders. Acquiring new customers is expensive,’’ says Bali, who ran Foodpanda for two years.

LimeTray got the backing of Matrix Partners in 2014 when it was still at a proof-of-concept stage and had 200 customers in NCR. Since then, it has built a full suite of products, and expanded to Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru and acquired 2,000 customers, including 100 in Dubai and some in Nigeria and Indonesia.

"Initially, we were more focused on growing in India. But now, we are looking to acquire customers both at home and abroad. This software sits on the cloud. One doesn’t have to physically install it and it is easy to scale," says Bali, who is helped by two co-founders.

LimeTray’s target is to acquire 10,000 customers in 18 months, expand reach, revenues and perhaps turn profitable. It could help it enter mature markets such as the US. "Most SaaS (software as a service) firms are profitable in four-five years. It depends on your ambitions," says Bali. Freshdesk, for instance, is entering new markets, building brand while companies like Zoho, Tally have been profitable for long.

Investors such as JSW Ventures feel as businesses or restaurants adopt technology rapidly, it is mobile-friendly companies such as LimeTray which can help them automate workflows, create value for themselves and investors, and, thus, the next wave of companies could be the SaaS firms.