Table of Contents
The Foodeterian Story: An inspiring journey of entrepreneurship
Q1. What is Foodeterian all about?
“Foodeterian is all about bringing your favorite restaurant close to you. Foodeterian is a tier-2 city focused food delivery service with an aim to change the way people order food in these cities. We are a restaurant aggregator and acts as a medium to increase the reach of restaurants to customers and at the same time help customers save their time and provide them a choice to order from nearby restaurants. Food tech is not a new thing in metro cities but emerging cities like Bhubaneswar really require these kinds of services to become fully smart” Says the Founding Team.
Q2. How is Foodeterian different than existing services in Bhubaneswar?
Foodeterian is a totally different concept. There are few services available in Bhubaneswar but our marketing model and value addition for restaurants are totally different. Everything is different about Foodeterian. The way we interact with a client or restaurant, the way we send our communication, the value we provide and our ethics make us totally different. This is a time where everything is changing and soft skills play a vital role in any business. Our professional experience is an addon which enables us to be able to understand the needs of restaurants and our commitment to provide the fastest service to our customers enables us to win their trust.
Q3. When and how did you start up?
We started our operations at the end of January 2018. We spent a long time planning everything. It was not a sudden thing and took us a good time to design our platform and app. Since most of our team has lived in Bhubaneswar for their study, we got a good number of contacts to support our initial activities. Now, we are currently the fastest growing food delivery service in Bhubaneswar and our restaurant partners are happy with us as we have our customized solutions to provide for their requirements.
Q4. How did you come up with the idea? Your inspiration moment.
Food Delivery is not a new concept. Instead, it is a proven concept in metro cities which currently adds to around 80% of revenue in prepared food delivery industry. But in emerging tier-2 cities, food tech is new, especially for most of the restaurants. Our team is a group of young professionals and we are food enthusiast who really loves to enjoy good food and why not, food is one of the most basic requirements for survival. We really wanted to bring a change in the way people order food in tier-2 cities and the recent increase in the number of smartphone users and cheap internet services confirmed our decision. We are on a mission to make food ordering a fun and trend in Bhubaneswar and other tier-2 cities.
Q5. Brief about your organization and founding members.
Our organization, Foodeterian, is recognized by the government of India under startup India and recently we got recognized by Startup Odisha as well. The founding members of our team form a perfectly tuned connection to ensure the success of any business. Amit Kumar, our CEO, who’s also an alumnus of KIIT has a professional experience in a top and mid-level management as part of his previous employment both within India and abroad. Shikha Gautam is our creative lead is an experienced person in management and have a great talent for creating and managing our campaigns. Pritish Patnaik is our VP for admin related work. Pritish has worked in company related to defense domain and he’s also an alumnus of reputed KIIT. Bhanu Ranjan is another MBA of our group who currently handles all our delivery management. Chandra Shekhar has 3+ years as an IT analyst in Accenture. Area of expertise is playing with data and bring helpful insights to our team. Currently, he is taking care of online PR and strategy for our company. Our exposure to the corporate world gives us an upper edge when it comes to understanding the needs of customers and we always ensure to keep our work honest and loves to keep it that way.
Q6. Tell us about your startup journey and what message you want to share with users.
“Our startup journey was full of life-changing experiences. We experienced all kind of challenges at professional and personal fronts during our journey from idea to actual launch. It’s easy to look from distance that a startup is actually a good way of life but the process is a real test. From our AC offices in MNCs where we worked on riding bikes whole day in roads of Bhubaneswar, being available on phone whole day, approaching people and restaurants. It was a life-shaping journey. Our message to aspiring entrepreneurs is: The most important asset you will have in your startup journey is your team. It’s not about how talented you are but how much people are willing to stand with you and hope for the best. We are really proud of our team and our delivery executives as well”, Says the Founding Team.
Q7. About funding, plans, and growth
We are currently not funded at all but we are hopeful that we will get funded very soon. Our immediate plans include strengthening our infrastructure and provide more chances of employment for local people of Bhubaneswar in our company. Food delivery sector is observing a good growth in India and we are growing with that. We have some great plans for restaurants of Bhubaneswar and we are always open to having words and discussion with them. Together, we grow and ensure every restaurant in Bhubaneswar can take maximum benefit by using the Foodeterian platform.
Q8. Explain the challenges a food tech faces in new market and opportunities. What are your marketing strategies?
A desire to bring a big change is always a big challenge and also a big opportunity. It’s not very easy to change how people use to order in a new and emerging market. App-based food tech is not a completely new thing to Bhubaneswar as well. Our existing competitors are still struggling to establish themselves in the city. However, it can’t be denied that the opportunity is very big here. With great marketing strategy and well-measured approach helped Foodeterian crack the market better than already existing players. People of Bhubaneswar are very honest and they like an honest business. Since, for a major part of our team, Bhubaneswar is like their second home, and some of us are native of Bhubaneswar, we love adding value to our customers. Our recent campaign with no minimum order value and a flat discount to celebrate Utkal Divas was successful. The best way of marketing is keeping your strategy people-centric, business will make way for itself.
Q9. Share an inspiring moment of your journey with us.
We had many inspiring moments where our team really backed each other but one event is very fresh as it took place recently. It was raining in Bhubaneswar and we receive an order. Our delivery executive Raja was assigned the task of delivering the order to the customer. We asked him to wait as the rain was heavy and accompanied by winds and he responded by saying that we can not delay the delivery else people might think we are not committed to our work. It was an emotional moment for us and another level of satisfaction that how our staff understands us and connected with us. As a founder, seeing this response from an employee truly restores our faith in goodness. Statistics: 53 Restaurants, 584 Customers (in two months of time)
Founder’s Advice:
Don’t listen to people who never take risks. You are meant to fly, not to stay in a cage.
Q10. Your website / apps / contact details.
Our website address is http://foodeterian.com. It is a great place to start if you want to know more about foodeterian as we have reserved our website for only informative purposes. You can download our app from Google Play store by typing Foodeterian. Also, our iOS app is about to reach market on 10th of April so you can enjoy our services on your i-Phone as well. You can contact us on our email support@foodeterian.com or help@foodeterian.com
