Serving hungry surfers; Order your dinner online withJusteat.in
So, you want to pick up some food from your favourite restaurant on your way back home, but don’t have the time to wait after placing the order? A website called Justeat.in helps you place your order online and even reserves tables across 1500 restaurants, serving 52 different types of cuisines. Started by IITian Ritesh Kumar Dwivedy, Justeat.in, not only allows you to search and locate restaurant of your choice, but also provides with restaurant listings and reviews of over 10,000 restaurants across 10 cities.
Yourstory catches up with Dwidvedy and finds out more on how Justeat is catering to the hungry surfers and the response so far.
How did Just Eat happen? Why a food based venture?
When I was working as a developer in 2004-2005, often we would work on weekends, when the cafeteria food was not available. We used to order food from nearby restaurants, but faced a lot of problems due to unavailability of a quality guide. We also found it difficult to communicate our choices with the restaurant as the order takers are usually too busy to listen carefully. This experience planted the initial seed. Like many others, soon I also got bored with my job and decided to take the plunge. It was not a hasty decision though, a lot of time was spent on finding if the model was viable and if a market exits.
Where are your offices?
We currently operate out of 3 offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. These offices also work as nodal centres for the respective regions i.e. South, North and West giving us presence in 26 cities in India currently. We have a 60 member team currently and will be 100 by end of Q1 2012.
When was your venture established?
The journey has been very difficult but enriching. Hungry Zone, which is the former name of Just Eat, was started in 2006. We always knew that growing this business wouldn’t be easy, but we also knew that later on it will become our USP.
Tell us a bit about the market size that you are trying to capture via your website?
The organized restaurant industry in India (excluding street food) is valued at $15 billion, growing at 21% per annum. However, the share of online orders is very low. With increasing real estate cost, restaurants too are focusing more on takeaways to grow their business. The advent of international brands has also spurred the growth in takeaways and home deliveries of food. All these augur well for a seamless one stop platform for food ordering.
How has the response to your portal been so far?
We are very strong in Bangalore and have been growing by 50% month on month in Mumbai and Delhi NCR. Although, registration on our portal is not mandatory, we have now over 100,000 registered users and 300,000 unique users.
Do users have to pay for your services? What is your revenue model like?
Our services are free to users. We charge a commission from restaurants on confirmed orders. Our margins usually vary from 10-15% of order volumes
Which are the main regions that drive your business?
We are operational in Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Mumbai and 23 other cities through our partners. Currently, Bangalore is our biggest market as it is our oldest. However, we expect Delhi and Mumbai to take over soon due to their sheer size.
What were the challenges you faced while setting up Just Eat?
We are the first-of-its kind in India. There was no model to emulate and the technology to handle the unique business requirements was difficult to build. We have strived very hard and have successfully built a scalable solution.
For more information, visit www.justeat.in
Author: Rohit Rohan
