Bangalore, May 18, 2016: Bangalore based SmartQ, a mobile app that enables queue-less ordering at food courts in malls and corporate office complexes, today announced that it has raised pre-series-A funding from YourNest Angel Fund. The company will utilize the funds to develop and deploy technology for verticals like amusement parks and retail, targeting a market size of more than USD 100 bn.
SmartQ aims to solve the everyday problem of uncertainty and delays over food ordering in food courts frequented by thousands of consumers every day. The app enables users to order food from a service outlet in a food court within 20 seconds and get an alert when the food is ready to be picked up, thereby eliminating the queues at both the PoS and pickup counters. The company has also tied up with mobile wallets like PayUMoney and Paytm to enable swift cashless transactions for its users. The company charges a commission for every order serviced by its platform. SmartQ has seen swift adoption and already has a presence in over 10-15 IT companies and IT Parks in Bangalore. The company has more than 45,000 users on its android app currently and clocks over1800 transactions daily. It is witnessing a growth of 50% every month.
Consumers continue to be inconvenienced at food courts, especially during meal times at office complexes, or peak times at malls due to long queues. The growing number of such office premises which house thousands of workforce, and the increasing density of malls in every town, point to a high number of consumers flocking at food courts, potentially reducing the overall dining experience. SmartQ aims at mitigating that for both the consumer and the food court restaurant.
SmartQ was founded in 2015 by Krishna Wage in partnership with Abhishek Ashok with a vision “to eliminate queues from the face of this earth”. Krishna is the CEO of the company and an alumnus of IIM Calcutta. Abhishek, an alumnus of IISC, is the CTO at SmartQ and has single-handedly developed the ecosystem for the app.
“We have witnessed phenomenal customer response and have been growing a rate of 60%. In Bangalore, we have partnered with large employers such as IBM, Wipro, and Accenture and already have 45,000 app downloads. The funds raised will help us expand our business to newer geographies like Mumbai and Pune and give us the necessary momentum to achieve our target of acquiring 1 million+ users in next 18 months”, said Krishna Wage, CEO, SmartQ.
“We are very impressed with the SmartQ team’s ability to onboard some top notch initial customers at a very low cost. Nothing can set the ball rolling for startups than serving quality conscious, large-scale businesses that expect very high service standards in the very beginning”,said Sunil Goyal, Founder and CEO, YourNest Angel Fund.
Mr. Vijay Jumani, Ex-CEO of BabyOye.com also participated in the funding round.
About YourNest
Founded in April 2011 by Sunil K Goyal, Sanjay Pande and Girish Shivani, YourNest Angel Fund is an early stage venture capital fund that invests in new connected economy represented by mobile, internet, data analytics, software and cloud. YourNest has an investor base of 140, which consists of the highest number of Indian individual investors (compared to any other fund) as well as leading institutional investors. YourNest operates a technology and consumer Internet-focused fund and have invested in more than thirteen start-ups including Fashalot, aahaa stores, MoMark, mycity4kids, Proof of Performance, Uniphore Software, OpKey, GolfLan, BetaOut, and Rubique.com.