Swiggy has really spoiled us all. Without waiting endlessly at the restaurant for your order to come and with negligible human interaction, one can enjoy great food. But what if we tell you that Swiggy is not the only app which can make this happen. Imagine pre-ordering your dish before starting for the restaurant, upon reaching the place scanning a QR code to get your order and that's it. This is the picture the Founder of Dinescan Hitesh Kumar Pasa paints for us. And we are quite liking what we see.
After developing the idea since the year 2015, Hitesh launched the app in August last year and it has been functional since December. "When we spoke to restaurants, we found out that they are quite worried about the future, especially in the scenario of Zomato and Swiggy," says Hitesh who was born in Balasore. So they decided to step in to make things easier for the restaurants' dine-in experiences and customers as well. Available in six restaurants in Bengaluru and four in Bhubaneswar, Hitesh informs that even though they have several restaurants in the queue, waiting to get onto their platforms, he wants to further work on their features before launching it full throttle. "We are expecting that in the next two months, all our features will be in place," says the 25-year-old and adds that, "Odisha is a particularly big market for us and we are excited about it."
Alumnus of Gandhi Institute of Technological Advancements, Hitesh has initiated other start-ups before and Dinescan is his current project. Currently, there are four people on board, soon they plan to hire marketing and technical people who can help them take their business to the next level. They are also on the lookout for investors who can help them take off further. They are getting mentorship from IIM Bengaluru, particularly from Prof Muralidharan. "He guides us in the matters of targeting markets and so on," says Hitesh. They were also part of iHub's Start-up Accelerator Programme which concluded recently, under which, they were mentored by founders, entrepreneurs and many others for a month.
Hitesh informs us that there is no restaurant that has not seemed interested in what they are offering so the future looks bright for their start-up. Currently, they are charging two to four per cent commission per order from the restaurant as there are otherwise no subscription or installation fee that they are charging. Hitesh reiterates that they are hopeful for their start-up and currently, are doing all they can to ensure that they officially enter the market soon.
In the making
Some of the features they are working on:
- Decision intelligence dashboard: Will predict the footfall on a particular day for the restaurateurs and inform them about which dish will sell like hotcakes
- Pre-ordering: A customer can decide the time of their arrival and place their order to receive it at the restaurant on time
- Dynamic pricing: If a dish is not selling too much, the price will drop. In no case will the price go up
Some screenshots from the app
For more on them, check them out at dinescan.com
