The year would be incomplete without introspecting on the goals set at the start and taking account of the progress we’ve made as we near the end. Keeping that in mind, here’s an honest look at how we Thrived in 2022!

As most of you know, Thrive is a pandemic baby, it was the need of the hour at the time and to put it simply we found the perfect product-market fit or pandemic market fit as we like to call it. Owing to the same, what followed was a couple of years of exponential growth and resounding success. However, as the world retained normalcy, we realised the imperative need for us to revisit our goals and realign the same to build what we believe will be next in order for food ordering and discovery in the upcoming decade.

But let’s slow down and take this meal course by course, shall we?

For entrée, the first quarter: What did we set out to achieve?

The year for Thrive kicked off with an ever-growing count of restaurants, but that also meant an increasing number of restaurants that needed support in populating their menus and marketing their direct ordering service to customers. Acting on this, we made an organisational shift with the prime objective of all teams helping restaurant partners complete their onboarding and start generating orders. Our efforts ranged from introducing a WhatsApp-based onboarding cycle to organising zero commission weekends, to enabling an offline presence partnership with WeWork, and integrating with complementing solutions like what3words, PayTM Mini Apps, Twid and more!

Onto the mains, the second and third quarters! How did we adapt to the normalcy-driven shift in the restaurant industry?

We had a milestone start to our second quarter as we hit the 10K restaurant count. Also, in a first since inception, we participated and introduced Thrive in person to the restaurant community at large at the Cloud Kitchen Convention organised by the NRAI.

We also had our first off-site after the pandemic, where we introduced the team to our vision for what’s to come. With renewed energies, we doubled down on our focus to help restaurants generate orders by introducing a revised self-sign-up and onboarding flow for Thrive, and launched a customer-facing restaurant listing page to enable discovery. Both quarters were riddled with multiple campaigns, co-funded incentives and Thrive Exclusive in partnership with brands such as Hundo Pizza, Faaak It! by Vir Das and Great Stale Aleworks, KCK, GoZero, Naturals and many more!

Lastly, in order to complement the expanse of our solution, we also made a much-needed transition from our then-existing landing page to a newly designed website that reflected us and our solution better!

Ending on a sweet note, the last quarter for dessert! What are we up to and how are we closing 2022?

We spoke enough about our realigned focus, and while we worked towards definite objectives and key results, it was about time we set it in stone. Everything we do at Thrive is the function of our culture and that is tied to our very purpose, vision, mission and values! In case you missed it when we announced it to the world, we’re on a journey to make food commerce better for everyone. Of course with a dream so big, our team had to get bigger as well and we welcomed multiple new faces. Thanks to a consolidated effort, our product progressed in leaps and bounds with new feature additions and improved reliability of the existing solution. We also kickstarted a community, Thrive First, and hosted our first offline event Thrive Together to showcase what we’re building and believe will be next in order for the paradigm of online food ordering and discovery. It goes without saying that the last quarter is almost always our favourite thanks to the non-stop festive campaigns, with food being common to them all - from Diwali to Christmas and now New Year!

Bonus; post-meal coffee! What’s in store for Thrive in 2023?

2023 is going to be a year full of a ton of hard work, and bigger realignments. Our focus will once again move towards adopting a more consumer-oriented approach. Three things that will make up the base for what’s next -

→ Commerce

→ Content

→ Community

More on this later, keep your eyes and ears open!

—

I’m sure you’re wondering why this can’t be it. You’re right, while we put it in words and anecdotes, for those who want it in numbers, here’s how Thrive fared in 2022 in a few quick stats!

→ Order Volume on Thrive is up by 18%

→ Total Restaurants on Thrive increased by a whopping 100%

→ GMV was down by 9% (Impact of adding on larger QSR chains, plus fine-dine customers moving from ordering into dining out in hordes).

—

We often overestimate what we can achieve in a day, but underestimate what we can accomplish in a year! Much the same at Thrive, we’re often hard on ourselves for not moving the needle enough in a day, but as we sit and write this yearly review, we’re proud to see how far we’ve come.

Lot’s to look forward to in 2023 and we can’t wait, ensure you’ve subscribed to our newsletter to join us on the journey.

‍