How DONE is providing technology support to restaurants
India is famous for producing the most number of software engineers around the world. But a large population of the country has not been exposed to technology. India’s software potential is yet to be realised. Most people who carry a smartphone do not use it to its full potential. It’s used primarily for taking pictures, listening to music, to Whatsapp& etc. The ‘smartness’ of the smartphone is hardly utilised to its fullest as most features are never put to task.
In light of this, Himanshu Khona and Vikram Raichura started DONE, an order management platform for food vendors covering all three sectors of phone, web and mobile.
Vikram had started VivaConnect, a voice services company, right after graduating from college. Himanshu, on the other hand, is a veteran in the technology space . Prior to starting DONE, he was the Senior Manager of Engineering at Netmagic Solutions, before which he worked at Patni Computer Systems and CA Technologies. He started consulting in the mobile arena in 2010 when one of his clients came up with a requirement. This requirement, he realised, could’ve been a startup in itself.
"We were approached by Box8 (Poncho then) to build order management on SAAS model instead of a traditional build, transfer and operate model. We did our research and concluded that there will be many brands looking for the same solutions. Once we rolled out and got in touch with other brands, the requests kept flowing," he says.
How it works
Once a restaurant signs up with them,they take their menu card and a list of places where the restaurants provides delivery, and work to bring the restaurant online. The company designs and developes the website for them, too. They design the mobile app (both iOS and Android) to enable their customers to place orders directly from their mobile phones. DONE sets up a dedicated call centre for the same purpose to give them complete independence in functioning,andhelps in a manifoldincreasein reach. Once a customer calls/uses the app/places the order via website, the orders are directly routed to the respected restaurant's kitchen via email, SMS or a POS(Point of Sale) system as per the restaurant's preference with the customer’s details.
At present, most of their revenue comes from monthly rental charges, call cost, web orders and orders by app. The company has signed 20 brands and close to 150 outlets across Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune. Some of their clients include Pizza Corner, Baskin Robbins and Kaati Zone. In the last one year they’ve served around 100K orders and 80K clients.
Looking at the future Himanshu says, "We can't predict that at the moment, but there’s tremendous growth for sure. Currently, we’re aiming to achieve 70 per cent of market share as we have an unfair advantage of being the first mover, with around 200 brands and 800 outlets, global presence and having a monthly traction of around 4.8 lakh orders (by the end of 2015). We’re looking for a fund of USD 3 million to fuel our expansion plan. We might be looking for M&A, but only if a good opportunity comes."
We recently wrote about TinyOwl, another startup making big in food mobiletech. Mobile penetration in the country has reached quite high, and it provides a good opportunity for startups to jump in to bring SMEs to the forefront. And this would be exceptionally effective in tier-2 and tier-3 cities where the food tech businesses have still not caught up.