9 things you didn’t know about Dineout
I am a foodie and like every true foodie in India, I was a heavy Dineout user well before I joined the company. However, when I first discussed the Chief Product Officer opportunity at Dineout in Jan 2020, I was pleasantly surprised by many things that I did not know about the company. In fact, it was eventually because of many of these things that I decided to take up the opportunity.
About 15 months into the role, I have talked to hundreds of prospective candidates for product management, design, analytics and content writing roles at Dineout and most of these things still surprise Dineout outsiders.
So, what are these things?
#1 GIRF is huuuuuuuuge!!!
This year, the Great Indian Restaurant Festival (GIRF), our annual restaurant fest, marked its 6th consecutive successful year of offering great savings with massive deals. As a foodie, I have always loved GIRF and the huge discounts it brings, but this time as an insider, I was impressed with not just the tech effort it takes to pull it off (read about that here), but also with the real magnitude of how big GIRF really is!
Here are only some of the numbers that partially capture the enormous magnitude of GIRF 2021:
#2 Dineout is India’s Only Full Stack Food Tech Product Company
A Full-stack startup is a company which develops a technology that can provide the end customer with a complete product or service which handles the entire value chain of its activity (iAdvize). To understand how Dineout is a full-stack company, let us first understand what a non-full-stack food tech company will look like.
A B2C food-tech company will typically focus on the foodies: Helping them find a table reservation or getting food delivered to their home. They may still have apps/websites for the restaurateurs to receive orders or set up menus, but these will strictly be supporting apps for the foodie side.
On the other side, a B2B food-tech company will focus on solutions for restaurateurs. It may focus on Point of Sale systems, online ordering products, customer relationship management solutions or a combination of these or similar other offerings.
A full-stack food-tech company does all of these and more! Dineout is that full-stack food tech company in India!
But wait! How did Dineout get there? Read on to the next point!
#3 We have made 5 acquisitions in the last 6 years!
While we have seen massive organic growth in the last few years, we have also been adding strategic capabilities inorganically through acquisitions. In fact, since late 2015, we have almost grown at the rate of one acquisition a year: That is five acquisitions so far!
It was with our very first acquisition of inresto in 2015, that we forayed into the B2B side of things. The snapshot below captures our acquisition-story since then:
With time, the capabilities of Torqus and Binge Digital have been absorbed in the inresto platform, Gourmet Passport has evolved to become the ultimate dining club for foodies in India: Dineout Passport, and SteppinOut has become a separate line of business (events) for us. (More about our events business in point #7)
But what exactly does Dineout B2B (aka inresto) do?
#4 inresto is a one-stop solution for restaurateurs:
Our mantra for the restaurateurs is: “You worry about the food and the restaurant; We will take care of the food-tech and the restaurant-tech”.
Here is what the inresto stack looks like:
Each of these products solves a unique problem and some of our B2B customers choose to go ahead with just one or two of these products. However, the real magic happens when products from the whole product family interact with each other and in some cases with the B2C side of Dineout. Picture this scenario featuring only some of the inresto products:
You have not visited your favourite restaurant for the last four months. Restaurant looks at the Recency-Frequency-Monetization (RFM) module of inresto Campaign and sends you a personalised message with a customised offer. You make a reservation powered by inresto Reserve and reach the restaurant where the valet issues you a digital valet token through inresto Valet on your phone before taking your car. As you walk to the your reserved seat, you proactively place an order through inresto Dinein. After you have enjoyed a scrumptious meal, you get the bill on your phone, which you pay through Dineout Pay (with great savings). As you rate the restaurant 5-star on a survey powered by inresto Feedback, you tap on the “Call car” button on the inresto Valet link. Your car is ready at the restaurant exit before you step out. You drive back home satisfied after a lovely evening.
Impressive, isn’t it? But wait till you hear about who all are using inresto offerings.
#5 You have definitely dined at or ordered from one of our B2B customers:
Unless you are a restaurateur, you may not have heard about inresto before today, but if you are a foodie in India, chances are high that you have been indirectly served by one or more products in the inresto product suite.
From Fine dine restaurants like Copper Chimney and Kylin Experience to Quick-Service ones like Theobroma and Mad Over Donuts, From bars & pubs like Social and Byg Brewski to cafes like Mocha and Coffee Culture, From traditional Indian giants like Bikanerwala and Haldiram’s to global players like Wingstop and Coco Ichibanya, From cloud-kitchen startups like Swiggy’s Bowl Kitchen, Eat.fit and Freshmenu to five star hotels like Marriott, Hyatt, and Radisson: our B2B business counts the Indian restaurant industry’s who’s who among its customers.
Wingstop? Isn’t that the American chain specializing in chicken wings? How are they one of inresto customers? Are they already in India? This is because….
#6 We build in India and ship to the world!
Our B2C product is presently focused on the Indian market, but on the B2B side, we are building a global product. The restaurateur community has somewhat similar problems worldwide. These problems range from increasing dependence on aggregators to having to work with copious amounts of paper in absence of affordable digital solutions to having insufficient technical know-how to utilize technology even if they can afford it. The inresto product suite solves these problems and we do not want to limit our solutions to just Indian restaurateurs.
India is our home market, but in addition, our product is currently being used by restaurateurs in 14 other countries including US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Uganda, Kenya, Singapore, and many more. Global expansion is one of our immediate key priorities and we are targeting presence in at least 40 countries by the end of 2022.
#7 We have been helping India in SteppinOut (responsibly)
We have been partnering with SteppinOut for the past few years and have seen some great engagement with the events we co-organized with them. That gave us sufficient confidence to go deep into the events domain by making SteppinOut a part of Dineout. We acquired them in late 2020 right in the middle of a pandemic when literally no events were happening. But we knew that being a full-stack player in events, i.e. being the organizer as well as the distribution company in events, is a bet for the future.
Since the acquisition and before we hit a pause because of the Covid-19 second wave, we have already conducted numerous events this year while following proper covid protocols, including standup comedy performances, night-markets, food festivals, a virtual concert by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and the biggest of them all: a Lucky Ali Live concert in Bangalore.
Now, with the second wave behind us, we have 100+ exciting events planned for the rest of 2021 again with strict social distancing norms.
#8 We have a unique program for techies interested in pursuing MBA
We have a unique program for engineers who are interested in pursuing full-time MBA programs: Dineout Techpreneurs. This is a one of its kind program that prepares MBA aspirants for their B-school applications and adds a much needed differentiation to their resume with the product management exposure they could receive at Dineout.
Read more about the program here and if this interests you, you can apply here.
#9 We have 4 tech offices in India & we are hiring!
Many people associate Dineout with our headquarters location: Noida and are surprised to hear that we have product, design and engineering teams spread across multiple locations: Noida, Bangalore, Pune and now Gurgaon. For now, we are fully remote collaborating equally well and delivering results. We will continue WFH till it is completely safe to return to the office, but we are all waiting for the post-pandemic world, when we can meet each other in person at one of these locations.
And with everything you read above, you probably won’t be surprised to know that we are hiring across Engineering, Product and Design functions across most of these locations. Visit the jobs section of our LinkedIn page for our currently open positions.
If you do not find a relevant position but are still passionate about our mission, please shoot an email to careers@dineout.co.in. We are always looking for mission-driven individuals who can make a difference.
So these are the nine things which often take people outside the company by surprise when I share them. Which ones surprised you the most? Please let me know in the comments.
Thanks to Shrikant, Safalya, Kritika & Samikshya for the amazing illustrations.
9 things you didn’t know about Dineout was originally published in Dineout Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.