Scientist developed a technique that can float small amount of food

With the remarkable progress in Generative AI, the way customers interact with technology has undergone a significant transformation. 

The Bengaluru-based food delivery platform Swiggy has taken a lead in using generative AI techniques to build products and services to enable intuitive ordering experiences. 

“We understand that choosing what to order from the multitude of options available on our app can often be a daunting task. Swiggy has heard your feedback, and with neural search, we aim to alleviate this pain point and make decision-making a fun and effortless process,” shared Madhusudhan Rao, CTO, Swiggy in a blog post.

Swiggy’s neural search enables users to search using conversational and open-ended queries and receive recommendations tailored to their specific needs. This makes it easier for consumers to find what they’re looking for without having to use or remember specific keywords.

Imagine being able to type queries like, “I just finished my workout. Show me healthy lunch options,” or “Show me vegan-friendly starters” Swiggy’s neural search understands these open-ended, conversational queries and provide customers with personalized recommendations. 

The neural search capability has been built using a Large Language Model (LLM), adapted to understand the terminology related to dishes, recipes, and restaurants and Swiggy-specific search data. 

“We have 50 million-plus items in our food catalog covering a wide variety of options. Through a meticulous two-stage process, the model has been fine-tuned to respond accurately to relevant food-related queries, in real-time. These capabilities have been developed in-house, giving us greater control over the product, faster iteration time, and the flexibility to adapt to changing market trends,” added Rao

The brand is also building generative AI-led solutions to better serve their restaurant and delivery partners. 

“For example, we are piloting in-house tuned LLMs to empower restaurant partners to self-serve on processes and questions related to onboarding, ratings, payouts, etc, leading to faster issue resolution and streamlining. A conversational assistant powered by this LLM will be available in the restaurant-owner app and via WhatsApp,” he added.

McDonald's Turkey has taken technological innovation to a next level by creating a drink menu using AI. 

"The Recipes from my ImaginAIon" smoothie menu is available at select McCafe branches in Istanbul, shared reports.

"In the present era, there is a notable fascination, particularly among the youth, with artificial intelligence-driven programs encompassing image, video and audio domains. With the responsibility of being a brand that adopts the principle of making everyone happy, we prepared an extraordinary project based on the expectations and demands of young people,” shared Özdeş Dönen Artak, CMO, McDonald's Turkey in the release.

The QSR chain has used ChatGPT to design the smoothie menu, which includes the Unicorn Smoothie and the Lemon Chiller Smoothie available for a limited time.

“We entrusted ChatGPT to create drink recipes that would resonate with these aspirations. Consequently, it bestowed upon us the extraordinary 'Recipes from my ImaginAIon' menu. In collaboration with our McCafé baristas, we successfully brought this innovative menu to life and presented it to our cherished customers within the Istanbul's popular McCafé branches. We invite everyone to experience these digital flavors that will be on sale for a limited time,” Artak mentioned.
McDonald's operates 250 outlets in Turkey, employing nearly 7,000 people.
 

Wendy's® and Google Cloud today announced an expanded partnership to pilot a ground breaking artificial intelligence (AI) solution, Wendy's FreshAI, designed to revolutionize the quick service restaurant industry. 

The technology has the potential to transform Wendy's drive-thru food ordering experience with Google Cloud's generative AI and large language models (LLMs) technology.

With 75 to 80 percent of Wendy's customers choosing the drive-thru as their preferred ordering channel, delivering a seamless ordering experience using AI automation can be difficult due to the complexities of menu options, special requests, and ambient noise. 

Google Cloud's generative AI capabilities can now bring a new automated ordering experience to the drive-thru that is intended to enhance the experience that customers, employees and franchisees expect from Wendy's.

"Wendy's introduced the first modern pick-up window in the industry more than 50 years ago, and we're thrilled to continue our work with Google Cloud to bring a new wave of innovation to the drive-thru experience," said Todd Penegor, President and CEO of Wendy's by adding that Google Cloud's generative AI technology creates a huge opportunity for them to deliver a truly differentiated, faster and frictionless experience for customers.

In June, Wendy's plans to launch its first pilot of Google Cloud's AI technology in a Columbus, OH-area, Company-operated restaurant, using those learnings to inform future expansions to more Wendy's drive-thrus. 

The pilot will include new generative AI offerings, such as Vertex AI and more, to have conversations with customers, the ability to understand made-to-order requests and generate responses to frequently asked questions. 

"Wendy's has always been at the forefront of innovation, and we're thrilled to build upon our partnership with the company with our new generative AI technologies," said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. " 
 

In line with their new “Your Mood, Your Pizza” campaign, Pizza Hut has once again wowed consumers by installing a one-of-its-kind AI-powered mood detector device that studies facial cues and expressions of customers and gives them recommendations for pizzas that best match their moods.

Pizza Hut becomes the first-ever QSR brand to use the power of AI to understand the mood of its consumers to help them choose what they crave for.

This device is installed in select restaurants across Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

“At Pizza Hut, we believe that dining is more than just eating - it's about the entire experience. With our new AI-powered mood detector, we're taking that experience to the next level by offering personalized pizza recommendations based on our customers' moods. We're thrilled to bring this innovative technology to our customers and offer a new and exciting way for them to interact with our brand,” shared Aanandita Datta, CMO, Pizza Hut India.

The mood detector uses innovative technology that offers a unique and personalized ordering experience. All you need to do is stand in front of the device, look into the screen and leave it on the detector to calibrate your mood and flash its pizza recommendation before you.  The device uses a statistical model that detects facial expressions by analyzing landmarks on the face such as eye movements, smiles, frowns, etc. captured by the camera. The model compares these patterns against a database of hundreds of thousands of publicly available images.

Customers' privacy is protected because the AI only stores face patterns as numbers and does not save any images in any format.

The AI-enabled device gives pizza recommendations in both veg and non-veg variants from Pizza Hut’s new range of 10 exciting and unique flavours like Mazedar Makhni Paneer, Dhabe Da Keema, Cheezy Mushroom Magic, Mexican Fiesta, Awesome American Cheesy, and Nawabi Murg Makhni, among others. 

Tiger Global backed QSR chain Wow! Momo has become the first QSR chain in India to enter & open restaurants in the Metaverse.

In a social media post, Sagar Daryani, CEO & Co-Founder shared that he is proud to announce Wow! Momo, Wow! China and Wow! Chicken is now open in Metaverse.

Customers can experience Kolkata’s best pandals adapted for the Metaverse with Festemverse.  #DurgaPuja #Kolkata #Experience #Avatar #Metaverse #Digital #Pandal #Prizes #Festemverse #Wowmomo #Wowpujo.

The feature is currently available on Android only and is going to be available on IOS too before Diwali.

“From Dhanteras, we shall also begin trading - as in if you buy on Metaverse; you can redeem that in store too,” added Daryani.

Earlier this August, Wow! Momo Foods has raised over USD 15 Million from OAKS Asset Management.

The company operate three brands; Wow! Momo, Wow! China and Wow! Chicken.

Launched in August 2008, the multi-billion-rupee QSR chain currently has a monthly revenue run-rate of over INR 40 crore and plans to double its growth by June next year. The brand is poised to end the financial year with a topline of over INR 450 cores as opposed to INR 220 Crores recorded in the last fiscal year. With robust expansion plan of over 250 outlets this fiscal year, supported by a network of over 50 Wow! Chicken stores and some strong brands for acquisition – the Wow! Momo story is expected to be power-packed in the next 24 months.

McDonald’s has partnered with global technology company Coates Group for its global Digital Menu Board (DMB) Content Management System (CMS) provider and one of two approved Digital Menu Board hardware providers alongside Acrelec Group.

While Coates Group has been providing solutions to McDonald's around the world for 50 years, this new appointment is the largest partnership engagement to date and follows an extensive, multiple-round RFP process in which several providers were evaluated.

"After thorough review of best-in-class CMS providers, it was clear that Coates Group was the best positioned technology partner for this critical phase of our digital evolution. Our goal was to find one global provider that could deliver our digital CMS vision, which is to enable a consistent ordering experience to all our customers around the world through a single, cohesive hardware and software solution," said Hashim Amin, Vice President of Global Product & Engineering, McDonald's.

The five-year agreement will enable McDonald's first, globally-standardized DMB solution. The comprehensive solution provides McDonald's markets with Coates' dynamic Switchboard™ CMS to power their content and marketing strategies.

"We couldn't be prouder to continue the great momentum we've built with McDonald's in the digital merchandising space over the last 10 years and to take our partnership to new, innovative heights. As a long-term partner of McDonald's, we are thrilled about the continued growth and success we've seen together and are excited to deliver in this new capacity, beginning with the transition of the US market to the Coates CMS solution," added Leo Coates, CEO of Coates Group.

Coates Group first formed a partnership with McDonald's in Australia in the 1970s as a traditional signage and merchandising provider. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the partnership grew into Asian and European markets with the introduction of new signage technology. Following Coates' evolution into the digital merchandising space in the 2010s, the partnership expanded even further across the world.

It’s that time of the year when we are all divided over jersey colours, but united over a Bucket of KFC chicken. And who would’ve thought all that loud cheering & screaming (even over the last piece of KFC Chicken) could win you more of your KFC favourites?

QSR chain KFC has come up with first-ever voice-activated mega offer on the KFC App - Howzzat!

Download the KFC app, click on the ‘Howzzat’ banner on the home screen and shout “Howzzat” as loud as you can; because the louder you cheer, the bigger the offer.

“We all know how KFC is the perfect companion for cricket matches. And now we’ve taken this partnership a notch, or rather, few decibels higher. A first for the QSR category, we have introduced an app-exclusive voice enabled offer that encourages fans to shout ‘Howzzat’,” shared Moksh Chopra, CMO, KFC India by adding that the louder they cheer, the higher the discount.

Developed in partnership with Isobar, the Howzzat feature is now available on the KFC app till 29^th May.

Score some extra discounts as you build your order, much like the extras adding up to your team’s score. Throughout the cricket season, consumers can win cash-off discounts of up to 40%.

“Increasingly voice marketing is forming an integral part of any digital marketing comms. While we had fun working on it with KFC, the idea was to ensure consumers have as much fun while ordering their favourite KFC chicken. Using technology, we enabled consumers to use the power of their voice to win discounts – the louder they cheered, the bigger the discount,” added Aalap Desai, CCO Isobar & Taproot India.

Carnival Cinemas subsidiary Carnival Foods recently made its debut in the automation segment by collaborating with Mukunda Foods, one of the leading Bangalore-based automation companies for QSR and food courts in Carnival theatres.

“Each Carnival QSR is a celebration destination for our customers. It serves some of the most loved cuisines, and we wanted to serve them the best irrespective of if it's a Lucknow outlet or a Kochi outlet. The intelligent kitchen automation with IoT has been a great accelerator here; AI-based standard operating procedure (SoP) and hygiene monitoring system gives a standardized experience. With automatic machines like Eco-Fryer, Wokie and Dosamatic, the QSR store can efficiently run 5-15 specialized Purple Foods brands since these machines can cook almost 80% of the cuisines,” said Rajeev Kumar, CEO, Carnival Food.

Carnival Foods has opened 25 new outlets in the last three months and is planning to scale up to 200 more.

The brand has installed automation like Eco-Fryer, Wokie, and Dosamatic across Mumbai, Kochi, Lucknow, and Kolkata.

They are also planning to execute this model at their Cinema level food court across 80 cinemas, starting with one in Mumbai.

“The commercial kitchens always needed automation, but people were not able to make out the long-term benefits. But with new-age brands like Carnival, trends are changing, and they would set up a live example of why automation is a must for multi-outlet brands,” shared Eshwar K Vikas, Co-Founder & CEO, Mukunda Foods by adding that very few brands look at automation with a broader perspective and understand the additional benefits like low turnaround time, high hygiene standards, minimal wastage, and Carnival could.

Automation has been helping ventures in the market to grow without compromising with their quality when their employees are on vacation, change in the operation staff or opening new outlets. It has made a difference in aiding the brands to maintain SOPs while simplifying their work and increasing efficiency without disrupting the flavours.

Voice-first culinary AI Tinychef co-founded by celebrated chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Bahubali Shete has announced the appointment of two new members to its core team, thereby strengthening its management team.

Saakshi Jain joins the team as CMO and will now look at Global Marketing while Rakesh Edavalath joins the team as GM and will take care of overall app & smart speaker product.

This announcement follows the recent development of Tinychef acquiring Zelish, of whom both Rakesh and Saakshi were Co-Founders of.

In her new role, Saakshi Jain will look at the marketing, branding and growth for Tinychef in its Indian, US & Canadian markets, along with helming the responsibility for all communication to its internal and external stakeholders. Whereas, Rakesh will be responsible for building & developing the product on both App & Smart Speaker devices.

“Tinychef’s acquisition of Zelish comes at an exciting time as we continue to break new ground with our strengths together and expand our user base giving them access to a lot more recipes and an enhanced experience not only on the app but also on AI-powered smart speakers,” shared Chef Kapoor.

Tinychef offers everything from automatic meal planning and 1-click grocery shopping to voice-guided cooking and works in sync with connected appliances. It also converts recipe content into branded conversations on Amazon Alexa and Google Home smart speakers.

Pizza chain PizzaExpress has partnered with Qlik® Cloud to enable employees across the business in the UK with access to real-time data for improved decision-making, resulting in annual savings and more empowered restaurant managers.

PizzaExpress first deployed Qlik in 2018, providing its teams with a holistic overview of restaurant data. This included datasets for sales, inventory and labour, making Qlik a central repository for analysis and reporting.

PizzaExpress wanted to expand and move to advanced and interactive analytics to put real-time data into the hands of employees at every restaurant across the UK through mobile devices. Additionally, the company wanted to establish a single version of the truth to enable decisions in the business moment. To achieve this goal, PizzaExpress has transitioned to analytics through Qlik’s hosted and managed cloud infrastructure, which enables it to centralise data management and distribution, ensuring that the right data is in the right people's hands at the right time.

With access to real-time, exact insights, employees are equipped with accurate, relevant data that enables them to take informed actions, such as when forecasting product demand, allowing them to make accurate purchasing choices that minimise food waste.

“We required a robust, all-encompassing data platform that we could implement across all our restaurants,” shared Dan Williams, Business Intelligence Manager at PizzaExpress by adding that they needed a solution with strong infrastructure around it. “We’re already seeing the benefits of Qlik in our operations team, with annual savings and efficiencies. We’re looking forward to rolling it out across the wider business to provide all employees with access to real-time data,” he added.

After a successful six-month trial period with the PizzaExpress operations team, Qlik Cloud will be launched to all restaurant managers from July, including a near-real-time set of dashboards to use for competitions and upselling.

“We are very pleased to be supporting PizzaExpress on its journey towards Active Intelligence, where real-time data not only underpins decisions, but helps everyone in the organisation to be able to take informed actions in the business moment for improved processes and greater value,” added Adam Mayer, Senior Manager at Qlik.

peAR, one of the first startups in Asia-Pacific to make an augmented-reality based in-restaurant ordering app has raised INR 2.5 Cr in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures.

The funds raised will be utilised in building 3D Modelling technology for augmented reality, so as to advance the B2C app.

Along with this, the startup will launch in 4 cities – Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi/NCR and Pune. The startup is also hiring across roles to strengthen the team.

With the funds raised, peAR aims to reach 15,000 orders monthly by the end of this year.

“The F&B industry hasn’t seen much of digital transformation beyond cosmetic changes. However, that has changed with the emergence of food tech companies who have brought lakhs of restaurants online and expanded their market and catchment area. peAR’s application augmented reality is truly a pioneering concept which hasn’t been attempted before,” said Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, IPV.

Founded in 2019 by then college students Dharmin Vora, Dhruvesh Mehta and Parth, the vision of peAR is to change the way people view and order food inside a restaurant. peAR helps users visualize the dish before ordering, thus making sure customers have a delightful experience at the restaurant. They use Augmented Reality to solve this.

In the last 2 quarters, peAR has grown 50X and has scaled its operations from 50 to 250 restaurants.

“We have seen 100% Month-over-Month growth in the past 6 months and we will continue to grow at a faster rate in the coming months as well. We are also planning to launch in few new cities as we want users across India experience 3D and augmented reality-based ordering,” added Dharmin Vora, Co-Founder, pear.

Food delivery executives at Zomato hit streets in Mumbai and Bengaluru protesting the company’s new incentive structure, which offers less money per delivery.

Zomato has also informed restaurants that they should prepare for a rider churn in its fleet this week as it is trying to rationalise costs.

The move by Zomato comes amid intense rivalry from Swiggy and UberEats, who have doubled payouts last year as they looked to expand fleets aggressively.

Zomato’s delivery staff will now get an incentive of Rs 850 for 46 touchpoints, that would be Rs 18.6 per touchpoint. Earlier, the scheme offered Rs 20 per touchpoint. This rate is only for weekdays, and each delivery accounts for two touchpoints.

On average, delivery personnel can earn Rs 25,000-30,000 per month, including petrol costs for the bike. This had more than doubled last year as companies aggressively tried to hit high volumes of orders, which play a critical role in raising new capital. Currently, Zomato is in the middle of raising $400-500 million from new and existing investors, and is said to be losing $40-50 million per month, shared media reports.

While Zomato told restaurants in Mumbai that it is prepared to manage delivery volumes on time, restaurant partners are not sure about the same.

Online delivery platform Swiggy is planning to launch operations in university towns.

Titled as Launchpad, the programme will bring on board students — typically those in the third year of a four year degree as the campus Swiggy CEO on each campus where it would launch operations.

The Bengaluru based platform is currently running pilots for the Launchpad in universities including Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Hyderabad, Lovely Professional University and Chitkara University in Punjab.

“We are looking at campuses, given that a macro environment of restaurant supply and large potential user base already exists across a radius that is smaller than that of cities, shared Vivek Sunder, COO, Swiggy, adding that with the scale disadvantage taken away, the cost of running the operation is much lower given the volumes generated are large enough.

Swiggy which has operations in over 50 cities is looking to roll-out the initiative in about 400 campuses, all over India.

The campus CEOs will be supervised by Swiggy’s executives who will also assist them in product and operational processes. The student CEOs will bring in domain and geographical know-how and also innovative campaigns to establish full fledged delivery operations in their campus areas.

The initiative is expected to cut down cost of launching operations in a new market by up to 50% for Swiggy.

Domino’s on July 28, 2018, ran a mobile campaign that let Snapchat users in the US order food directly inside the image-messaging app.

As per Adweek, Snapchat’s “shoppable AR” which mixes social commerce with augmented reality features, gave Domino’s customers the opportunity to request a pizza after interacting with a branded lens.

The AR lens worked with both the front and back cameras of a smartphone. Those who took a selfie saw their faces decorated with a virtual pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses that had a reflection of a pizza in the lenses.

Flipping the camera around showed a virtual Domino’s pizza box that opened to show a pepperoni pizza inside. From there, people could tap an on-screen button to request a delivery without ever leaving the app.

Domino’s has been testing Augmented Reality based solutions since 2014. The brand first activated a print ad campaign with AR exclusive offers in a limited test. It also experimented with Japan’s virtual pop star, Hatsune Miku, which attracted more than one million views.

The pizza brand has been trying to incorporate high-end tech solutions like trial runs of drone delivery of pizzas in New Zealand.

After its success in Chennai, a restaurant making use of robots as waiters has made its foray into this textile city.

The trend of robot restaurants has become usual in Japan, China, Bangladesh and some western countries and that prompted a group of youngsters to start this venture, claimed to be the first such in the country, some eight months ago in Chennai, a partner of the 'robot theme restuarant' said.

"There are a few robot waiters to bring food to the customers' tables," Jagadeesh said.

The robots are imported and in different colours and the restuarant has some manpower to programme the machines, he said.

"Each table has a tablet and the customer just have to enter the dishes they need on it and press send and the order will reach the cooks and once it's done, the cooks will send out the robots to serve to the respective tables," he said.

The robots understand English and Tamil, Jagadeesh said.

Storing and selling wines can become a complicated business if proper arrangements are not considered in any eatery. With the aim of pushing businesses on top of the top, ELANPRO, India’s leading commercial refrigeration company, has a professional range of wine dispensers – Wine For You.  The product is designed to chill, dispense, and preserve dazzling array of red and white wines making wine-by-glass a profitable reality.

An integral part of a profitable wine-by-the-glass program is to reduce waste, over-pouring, and to increase convenience for maximum return on investment. The state-of art wine for you adds a new level of wine storage complementing functionality and style to every professional set-up. The product is available in 4-12 bottle options considering a restaurateur’s current needs and future aspirations. ELANPRO Wine Dispenser boasts a more powerful cooling capacity than thermoelectric versions and can better adapt to varying temperatures and added heat loads. It also features innovative, compressor-based dispenser to keep a stable internal temperature despite environmental conditions.

The new wine dispenser from Elanpro uses nitrogen to displace incoming air to avoid any change in flavour or colour. The temperature controlled system keeps wine as fresh as the moment they are uncorked for upto four weeks. The eye-catching product is made of stainless steel. The use of stainless steel to frame the dispenser’s insulated glass door adds to its sleek, modern design aesthetic because it allows more glass to be exposed – making it possible to beautifully showcase each bottle stored in its entirety. The user friendly product is equipped with adjustable temperature control with display for cabinet temperature control regulating the temperature between 6°- 22°C.

Elanpro wine storage solutions that not only properly store the commodity, but also add to the design aesthetic of each location’s environment. Standing by the mission to provide only reliable products with different choices to customize the systems, ELANPRO is continually innovating and developing reliable systems that can serve different demands.

YourNest Angel Fund-backed SmartQ, a food-tech startup, has acquired Nexus Venture Partners-backed Goodbox’s cafeteria business for an undisclosed sum. SmartQ expects to increase its customer base with this acquisition, while by offloading its cafeteria business, Goodbox wants to focus on its hyperlocal business.

As per sources, the deal size is around $8,00,000 (Rs 5.50 crore) and is a complete cash deal. SmartQ declined to divulge the deal size.

“We have sold our cafeteria business to SmartQ. We wanted to focus on the hyperlocal business and are exiting the cafeteria solution as it is non-core to us now” said Abey Zachariah, CEO, Goodbox. He further said that Goodbox is doing very well in hyperlocal commerce.

Dibz, an online food delivery startup which also serves as an online-to-offline (O2O) platform for discovering restaurant deals, has raised an undisclosed amount in a bridge round of funding from Stellaris Venture Partners and existing investor Benori Ventures, a top company executive told VCCircle.

Vikas Bagaria, founder of toilet hygiene brand PeeSafe, and Rahul Maroli, vice-president and business head at ride-hailing unicorn Ola, also participated in this round. Both individuals had invested in Dibz in the past.

Apart from Stellaris, the other new investors in this round included Ritu Mehrotra, country manager at Booking.com, and Abhivyakti Gulati, founder of handicrafts & household items platform Aakarsshan.

Dibz, operated by Gurugram-based Xpericon Online Solutions Pvt. Ltd, will primarily use the fresh capital to expand to more cities besides consolidating operations in areas where it already has a presence, said co-founder Sonal Pande.

“Though we have a presence in Gurugram and have plans to expand into Delhi and Noida as well, tier-2 and 3 markets are our main focus,” said Pande. “We are already present in Varanasi, Allahabad, Lucknow. We will soon launch our services in Dehradun and Kanpur.”

Dibz hopes to be present in 10 cities by the end of October. Apart from expanding to a few more cities in Uttar Pradesh, venturing into another state is also on its to-do list.

The company had previously raised two rounds of funding – one each in 2016 and 2017 – from Benori Ventures, Bagaria and Maroli besides Amit Parsuramka, president-funds at Lodha Ventures and Partha Sarathi Guha Patra, founder of Asadel Tech.

Founded in November 2015, Dibz had a soft launch in April 2016 in Gurugram before moving into tier-2 markets in the region. Late last year, Pande’s husband Rishabh Kaila came on board as a co-founder .

Dibz’s other founding members include Udit Verma, who looks after verticals that include marketing, operations, customer acquisition and retention. Raunak Pandey handles business development.

The venture started off as a mobile app that enables users to discover curated offers and deals from more than 150 restaurants, hotels and pubs.

Using proprietary algorithms and a predictive analytics platform, Dibz helps its merchants decide on appropriate deals.

However, Dibz has gradually moved away from deal discovery as its primary business and is currently focussing on food delivery. The venture also has plans to develop in-house logistics capabilities.

Dibz claims to have more than 70,000 customers using its platform and has plans to increase this number to about 5 lakh by end of this year as it expands to new markets.

“The idea is to eventually become a unified platform for food. Be it restaurant deals & discounts, table bookings or home deliveries, we want to be the go-to platform for anything to do with food,” she added.

Business-to-business food tech firm HungerBox has raised USD 4.5 million ( around Rs 31 crore) in funding led by South Korea's Neoplux and India-focussed PE fund Sabre Capital.

The series A funding round also saw participation from Lionrock Capital (Singapore) and Infosys Co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, HungerBox said in a statement.

The funds will be used to support the company's growth in India as well for expansion into the southeast Asian market, it added.

"We look forward to working with the HungerBox team as they continue to transform the way large businesses handle their corporate food wellness and their F&B requirements," Sabre Partners Founder and Managing Partner Rajiv Maliwal said.

Started in 2016, HungerBox operates across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR, Jaipur and Kolkata.

"We are seeing our business growing exponentially. Employee headcount has doubled to over 400 in less than six months; daily orders have grown to more than 2,00,000 from 1,20,000 in the same period, HungerBox CEO and Co-Founder Sandipan Mitra said.

Pristine Organics, a Bengaluru-based food technology & FMCG company, pioneering research in Food R&D is offering five individual ranges of millets products, namely – Little Millet, Foxtail Millet, Banyard Millet, Proso Millet and Kodo Millet.

Millet is one of the ancient and oldest food known to mankind. This super crop being reclaimed its importance in the current scenario of global warming, food security and recommended by renowned nutritionists and chefs across the world for its rich dietary fibre and nutritionally superior grain. There are a total nine varieties of millets grown across India.

Pristine’s range of individual millets products offers 100% organic millets, rich in dietary fiber and nutrients, gluten free and vegan. These ranges of millets product are ideal for cholesterol, sugar level management and for weight control. 

Speaking about the benefits of millet, K.C. Raghu, Founder & MD, Pristine Organics said, “The history of millets in our food goes back to about 15 thousand years. They are nutritionally rich in complex carbohydrates, high dietary fibre, good fatty acids and phytonutrients; making it ideal for sedentary lifestyle contrary to popular belief. From ecological point of view, millets are resource conserving and climate compliant. In the last couple of years, there has been a noticeable awareness on healthy eating, as a responsible stakeholders we need to conserve diversity of diet and consequently unknowingly nutrition and human health.”

The company sells a variety of certified organic foods products right from baby food, cereals, biscuits, porridge, cold pressed edible oils, flour, rock salt, coffee to baby massage oil, nutritional supplements and health mix. The brand also creates personalized monthly supply of Health Basket which are tailored diets as per the specific health condition which consists of exotic combination of diverse organic foods range. The Health Basket is available for Weight Reduction, Sugar Control, Heart Health, and Pregnancy & Lactation Diet.

Noida-based RailYatri has acquihired Kochi-based food delivery technology startup YatraChef. YatraChef team will now manage pan India supply side of RailYatri’s in transit delivery business.

With this, RailYatri has further strengthened its supply side commerce capabilities as it continues to add new offerings to its travel marketplace. Last-mile capability is becoming a critical piece in commerce marketplaces as companies are able to provide a complete online and offline experience to its users, in addition to creating a premium and differentiated offering.

"YatraChef brings a deep experience of over four years in food delivery and vendor management. It has a track-record of delivering outstanding consumer experience to travellers. YatraChef’s skills will help us jointly develop new offerings that would redefine the traveller experience with RailYatri. We are delighted to have them on board" shared Manish Rathi, CEO and co-founder RailYatri.

"Having partnered with RailYatri for some time now, it was an obvious decision to join hands as we can make a much bigger impact together. We are excited to be part of the RailYatri family and look forward to continue growing stronger than before" quoted Arun Rajan, CEO and co-founder of YatraChef.

Bengaluru-based HungerBox, a B2B food-tech company, on Monday announced closing of $ $2.5 million in pre-series A funding led by Lionrock Capital and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Started in 2016, HungerBox is a full stack, foodtech company that is focussed on the B2B space and operates over 100 digital cafeterias for more than 75 corporate clients, including Qualcomm, Microsoft, FirstSource, Accenture, Capgemini, Genpact, ABB, Amazon and McKinsey in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR and Jaipur.

“HungerBox’s business has scaled tremendously over the last 15 months with nearly seven million orders placed on our platform till date. We are clocking more than 120,000 daily orders and expect to scale this to half a million orders per day by end-2018,” Shared Sandipan Mitra, CEO and co-founder, HungerBox.

The funding we have received from marquee investors will boost our ability to scale our operations to keep pace with the traction we are seeing for our digital cafeteria management solution.

“There is tremendous potential for innovation in the B2B foodtech arena as corporate spends on F&B are already massive and growing year-on-year. HungerBox addresses this large space with an easily scalable model and an end-to-end solution that provides a win-win to employees as well as to corporate clients” said Kris Gopalakrishnan.

“The B2B food space has plenty of headroom for growth and innovation for years to come. The winners in the sector will be those with a powerful, tech-led offering and the ability to scale in-step with their clients. HungerBox certainly has all the credentials to be a leader in this space,” Quoted Hari Kumar, founder and CEO, Lionrock Capital.

Nusra

In a bid to scale up business operations and further sustain its market leadership, Mumbai based online food curation and delivery service provider Holachef, has appointed Rohit Sharma as its new Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSO).

With over 21 years of rich and diverse hospitality sector experience, Rohit joins Holachef from his previous stint at Tata Starbucks as Director of Supply Chain.

“I am excited to join Holachef and be part of the disruption that is a foot in the traditional food services industry. This clearly means newer challenges as well as immense possibilities for us at Holachef.  Automation and supply chain process efficiency will be critical areas of focus for me. I look forward to working with the extremely passionate team at Holachef as we work towards our mission to be the extended kitchen for consumers across cities.” said Rohit Sharma, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Holachef

His other stints include work with Nirulas Corner House Pvt Ltd, Devyani International Ltd, Domino’s Pizza and Taj Mahal Hotel in various capacities. 

Rohit Sharma’s experience of handling end-to-end supply chain portfolio, building competitive market positioning for several food and hospitality brands is expected to fuel Holachef’s focus towards profitable and sustainable growth. While being the Senior Supply Chain Director at Tata Starbucks, Rohit brought key attributes of strategic and tactical leadership towards growth of the business.

As the new Chief Supply Chain officer, Rohit would be responsible to look after the entire food preparation infrastructure, supply chain automation, sourcing, quality control, food process management and expansion of food categories at Holachef. His charter would also include enhancing revenue growth and cost savings through strategic process improvements, savings initiatives, leveraging unutilized capacities, development of transportation networks among others.

Speaking on the announcement, Co-Founder & CEO Saurabh Saxena said “Rohit has an excellent track record of building successful teams and driving tangible results through streamlining processes,” His experience with multiple high growth organisations and exposure to technological driven supply chain management will be invaluable to Holachef at this juncture of high-speed growth.

Holachef continues to focus on product innovation and critical talent hire in its aspiration to create a food curation category and growth. The company bagged an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata in August 2015 and earlier also raised a Series A funding of INR 20 Crore in a round led by Kalaari Capital in June 2015.