The journey of our team at SpeQue has been as ordinary as it has been unique. It has been a story of a bunch of food-loving, driven youth making the experience of dining-out easier and more efficient; of successes and failures; of hopes and dreams. But most of all, it has been a story of innovation. With the burgeoning of the food application industry, and with several (fairly popular) application already offering comprehensive inventories of restaurants and eateries in several cities and towns, and several others offering the home delivery service, the struggle for us was to find a niche area that could add to the experience of our customers. Given our experience as food lovers, with a penchant for eating out, we felt that the only thing missing was a forum to allow us to remove the inefficiency of manual ordering and reservations, and voila! SpeQue began to take shape in our collective imagination.
We started by approaching some of our friends who could help us develop such as app around January, 2015, casually over drinks or a meal, and realised that the idea was viable. But though everyone seemed enthusiastic over drinks, the pressures of work and everyday life prevented any concrete steps from being taken till well into February 2015. Fortuitously, one of our friends, with considerable experience in application development, chose that exact time to move from Hyderabad to Bengaluru, and with him, we were able to start developing the product.
Our first breakthrough, if we could call it that, came as early as June, 2015, when our idea was selected for the Microsoft Bizspark Programme, which gave us access to free servers for a three-year period. With that feather in our cap, we began approaching various restaurants, and were delighted when they evinced interest in being part of the programme. By September, 2015, our first user app, with about ten restaurants on board, was launched, and within a month, we had more restaurants joining the project.
By January 2016, within a year from when we had our first SpeQue moment, we had perfected the in-house ordering mechanism, the partner app was launched and people were using the online reservation and ordering facilities. By May, 2016, we had around two hundred application downloads, and we’re positive that as more people get to know about SpeQue, the numbers will rise. We’re also elated at the response we have received from a lot of restaurants who are as keen to be on SpeQue as we are to have them on it!
But to tell you the truth, this is all logistical mumbo-jumbo. SpeQue is nothing more than a product of our passions and energies, of the shared love for food that binds this team, just as it binds our diverse country. It’s a humble manifestation of the aspirations of ordinary middle-class folks trying to take control of their own lives, and in the process, creating something that makes the lives of others a little better. We’re honestly your everyday students and office-goers, who’ve taken the experiences from their everyday lives and decided to come up with something that makes other people go, ‘hey, that’s pretty cool!’, and if we’ve managed to do that for any of you, our job is half done.
As for the other half, well, we’re spirited, excited and motivated to take SpeQue to the mobile phones of all those who like going out to eat. We’re certain that our simplified menus, our online reservation and ordering facilities and the unique discounts we offer our users will not fail to impress you. And if you are impressed, spread the good word! Help us make the restaurant experience that much simpler, that much more convenient and that much more enjoyable!
Keep eating, keep SpeQuing!