Deliverychef lets you choose from menus of 600 restaurants!

Ashna Ambre

Aditi Kapur and Ankita Tandon, both 26, were flatmates in London in 2007 for a year. A busy working life left them with little time for daily necessities like cooking and they found themselves ordering in as a quick-fix solution. The next year, Kapur quit her job at Morgan Stanley and returned to India to pursue a Masters in Business Administration. "I realized I would get practical experience if I started a venture of my own," says Kapur.

E-commerce In India Was Looking Up

While Kapur was in India, Tandon was still with Deutsche Bank in London. Over a casual chat they concluded that e-commerce in India was poised to play a transformational role in people's lives. By 2009, booking tickets on the web had picked up pace, an indication that customers were willing to make financial transactions online, provided they were furnished with detailed information.

This trend extended to ordering food online but no single platform gave information about all the restaurants. Those offering home delivery floated menus online which were not updated and busy telephone lines did not help hungry customers either. Kapur says, "I spoke to many small restaurants that do well, locally. Most of them could not afford a website, and those that did‚ could not run it well. They lost out on customers due to the unavailability of these mechanisms."

Getting Started With Deliverychef

"Abroad, online bookings for airlines, movies and hotels are followed by the food and beverage industry. We saw the same pattern falling in place for India and decided to jump into it," says Tandon. In November 2009, Kapur launched Deliverychef in Mumbai.  Since Tandon was still working, she pitched in with advice. They wanted a site with a complete list of restaurants sorted by location that were willing to deliver food home, and fully furnished menus with prices and offers.

They first shaped backend technology including a coding process so eateries from the furthest corners could go online, tools for users to order from multiple places simultaneously and then tied up with payment gateways.

Year 2010 was spent appraising restaurants on advantages. Larger eating joints, aware of the cost-benefit analysis, were easy to convince. Persuading small local restaurants was cumbersome. "These are important drivers of business -- they are decently priced, known for their food and customers prefer to get food at home," informs Kapur, Director, Deliverychef. The persuasion prowess of the duo helped them bag a few small eateries to kickstart business.

Restaurant Verification And Corporate Tie-ups

Kapur and Tandon carried out a market test in end-2010 and opened the site to a closed group of people to understand user experience and incorporated suggestions before going live mid-2011. "Deliverychef makes ordering food from multiple places convenient without the hassle of storing numbers or menu sheets. They even cater to minor changes in orders made in a few minutes‚" says Sameer Parwani, a customer. Restaurants must fulfil three pre-requisites before they can be listed on Deliverychef. First, they need to have a mechanism so Deliverychef can electronically transmit order details to the restaurant. Legal formalities must be in place and they should hold a valid bank account for transactions. Lastly, restaurants must have in-house delivery arrangements. Deliverychef receives 15 percent of total order value as commission.

The startup also feeds the corporate world, thanks to a tie-up with organisations. Companies provide employee codes and allocate budgets per employee to Deliverychef. A win-win for both employees and employer as it saves the former the hassle of claiming food bills, while the latter benefits by doing away with verification and accounting of such reimbursements. Deliverychef takes a certain amount as advance to pay partner restaurants.

"The corporate tie-ups benefit our brand as it helps in creating greater visibility and provides us with marketing functions with no added cost. We have seen a rise in orders for us," confirms Adarsh Sharma, Head-Pune, Faaso's.

Deliverychef verifies all restaurants that undergo a hygiene test around parameters like cleanliness, quality of food and staff. Customer feedback is taken into consideration. Untimely deliveries and mishandling of food can delist a defaulter restaurant from the site.

Growth And Expansion

As many as 600 restaurants have registered on Deliverychef including Copper Chimney, McDonald's, apart from smaller ones like Salsa Wraps, Sky Café, among others. It beefed up its inventory in late 2012 by adding 50 restaurants from Pune and has since expanded to Navi Mumbai and Thane. The number of backroom support staff has increased to seven from three in 2011. "The aim is to remain capital lean, and have sales managers to help put agreements and contracts in place in other cities," says Tandon, Director, Deliverychef.

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