INDIA, 30 November 2021: Mumbai based food tech startup Thrive announced on Wednesday that it has raised a series A round led by Jubilant FoodWorks Limited.
The funds will be used to bring on more restaurants, improve its product and expand the team. The pandemic has led to a rapid realisation by many restaurateurs that their heavy reliance on aggregators is not beneficial. With many of them forced to rely entirely on delivery and takeaway business during the pandemic, there’s been a rapid shift to move away from aggregators.
Thrive has built an integrated SaaS solution helping restaurants to build out their own ordering experiences which not only helps them save up to 30% of their revenues but also provides them with the rightful ownership of their customer data.
Over the span of a year, Thrive has scaled to over 5500 restaurants across the country. Thrive has a self-serve tool that allows restaurants in any part of the country to set up their own direct ordering platform in less than 10 mins. It counts restaurant groups such as Naturals Ice Cream, Fabcafe and independent restaurant brands such as The Bombay Canteen, Americano and Izumi amongst its customers. With their own online ordering platforms, restaurants have seen savings of up to 15 - 17% even after removing delivery costs.
CEO Krishi Fagwani says, “The incredible growth we’ve witnessed over the past 15 months, is testament to the fact that direct ordering is here to stay. We don’t expect restaurants to abandon aggregator platforms, but with the right set of tools - restaurants can handle more online orders themselves and make more money at the same time establishing a direct relationship with their customers.”
Thrive was founded by Krishi, Dhruv, and Karan each of whom knows the hospitality industry well - their previous product Hashtag Loyalty, a customer engagement and loyalty tool is used by 1000s of restaurants pan-India and forms the backbone of Thrive.
Talking about the prospect of bringing on Jubilant FoodWorks as partners, Dhruv says, “We’re super excited about working with Pratik and the team at JFL. We’ve always wanted to bring on partners that can not only provide us with growth capital but also help us strategically. Domino’s India, part of the Jubilant FoodWorks portfolio has pioneered direct ordering in India and we can look back at their learnings and expertise that they’ve built and unbundle it for the entire restaurant industry. This is a super exciting prospect for us and JFL.”
Thrive’s larger vision is to democratize online ordering in India. Speaking about the way forward, Karan says, “There is an inherent imbalance in the food delivery ecosystem, and there is a need for equality amongst the participants - consumers, restaurants, and third-party partners - and more transparency. Our aim is to be able to work together with the restaurant community to do that, and with JFL we’re confident we can do that and much more.”
Talking about the investment Pratik Pota, CEO at Jubilant FoodWorks added, “We are delighted to be able to partner with Thrive and look forward to supporting the founders and the exciting team there towards delivering their vision of making the restaurant online ordering experience more universally accessible.”
The Thrive journey has been nothing short of exciting, hear from our team more about the same: