And if all those lay-offs and shut downs made you think that the food tech sector is all but gone, well, you were wrong. Petoo, a Bangalore based food-tech startup, has snapped up around $1 million in its seed round from VC firm Axilor Ventures, along with the participation of some high net-worth individuals.
With the new cash coming to the company, it is now planning to use use the capital primarily for food research and to further improve business back-end.
Founded in March 2015 by Kumar Setu, Ritesh Dwivedi and Abhishek Mandal, Petoo aims to ensure that Indian food is easily accessible, convenient to eat in neatly packed boxes, and is the popular choice. It is noteworthy that Ritesh Dwivedi is the former founder and CEO of JustEat. Another team member, Abhishek Mandal is an IHM alumnus & former Dell official.
Currently, the startup is operating only in Bangalore. However, it hopes to use this funding to expand to more areas in Bangalore and eventually launch its service in other cities, including Chennai and Hyderabad.
The company’s plan is to expand its business to 11 more locations by June and cover the entire city by the end of the year before expanding to other places.
Commenting about this funding round, Ganapathy Venugopal, co-founder and CEO of Axilor said,
Petoo has one of the most experienced teams in the food delivery space in the country. We liked the integrated model, the team’s focus and the strong analytical approach they bring to business.
Kumar Setu, co-founder of the company, said,
It doesn’t only give us more financial bandwidth but it’s also a vote of confidence by veterans like Chris and Shibu Lal themselves regarding our lean business model and deep understanding of this business.
Along with using funds to enhance its back-end operations, speed up food research and consolidate the team, the company is also planning to launch their own website and mobile-app based ordering system aimed at providing seamless ordering experience for users with features like 3-tap ordering, live order tracking among others.
It is getting about 100 orders daily and most of them are from restaurant aggregators such as Foodpanda, JustEat, TinyOwl and Swiggy. To ensure high standards for food quality, Petoo refrains from cluttering its menu with a large number of items.
By focusing on a menu comprising only Indian dishes, we aim to cater to discerning customers, who relish rich traditional dishes. With over a decade’s experience in food-tech space, we understand customer preferences.
said Ritesh Dwivedy, co-founder of Petoo.
