[Funding alert] Thrive raises pre-Series A investment led by Whiteboard Capital, Ahimsa Capital

Mumbai-based foodtech startup Thrive Now has raised an undisclosed pre-Series A funding led by Whiteboard Capitaland Ahimsa Capital.

The funding will be used to add more restaurants to the platform and expand its product offering. The team added that it will be moving to a self-serve model, which would make Thrive more accessible to small, independent restaurants across the country.

In a press statement shared by the company, Krishi Fagwani, Co-founder, Thrive, said:

"We quickly understood the reality for our business and the industry we serve had changed. We immediately went back to the drawing board and spoke to our customers to understand how this new normal will shape up. Thrive is a restaurant-first solution that will not only allow them to survive the harsh reality of the pandemic but also thrive in it."

The company was founded earlier this year by Krishi Fagwani, Dhruv Dewan, and Karan Chechani. Thrive has built an integrated SaaS solution for restaurants to build their own ordering experiences. This in turn helps them save close to 30 percent of their revenues but also provides them with the ownership of the customer data.

ALSO READ

Flipkart Group acquires 2018 Tech30 AR startup Scapic

Anish Malhotra, Founder at Ahimsa Capital, said, "We are proud of the team’s tireless focus through these difficult months on helping restaurants take control of their destiny. Now, more than ever, businesses need to improve margins, own their distribution and data. Thrive allows them to do this and more."

"Krishi, Dhruv, and Karan have demonstrated strong and sensitive leadership with a relentless approach to making their customers more profitable. This positions them as a market and thought leader in the massive systemic shift in food and beverage consumption that we are witnessing, a market which will continue to grow and Thrive," he added.

Thrive's solution allows restaurants to share their digital ordering links with their customers to order from Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and SMS in a few clicks. Prior to founding Thrive, the co-founders had built Hashtag Loyalty, a customer engagement and loyalty tool is used by 1000s of restaurants pan-India. The platform forms the backbone of Thrive.

Anshu Prasher, General Partner at Whiteboard Capital, said,

"Leveraging their background in customer relationship management and a deep understanding of the restaurant industry, the Thrive team has built an extremely relevant vertical tech product solving for data and control for their partners. We have loved the initial engagement and partnerships the company has forged and look forward to an exciting journey with the team."

The platform launched a beta in July this year, and scaled to over 1,500 partner restaurants primarily in Mumbai and Delhi. Thrive has partnered with the likes of Natural Ice Creams, Lite Bite Foods, and Apsara Ice Creams as well as popular independent restaurants like Izumi, Americano, The Table, and The Mexican Box.

The press statement shared by the company said that in the past three months, its GMV grew by 330 percent and its partners saw savings of up to 15 - 17 percent even after removing delivery costs. Although the need for such solutions has existed in the market before, the pandemic has simply facilitated their adoption and expedited digitisation.

Talking about the key differentiator, Dhruv said, "Unlike other companies, we are focused on making sure we provide the same aggregator value proposition that restaurants and customers are used to - menu management, integrated payments, last-mile logistics plus in-built marketing CRM and loyalty to take advantage of the customer data - but at fraction of a cost."