HYDERABAD: The popular Korean HQ pizza brand, GOPIZZA, launched its first store in Hyderabad at Sarath City Mall, HITEC City recently. GOPIZZA, is known for its single-serve, oval shape, fire-baked pizza with quick serving speed and affordable price.
What started out as an idea from Founder Jae Won (Jay) Lim’s food truck in South Korea, is now a favourite pizza brand with more than 200 stores across South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Hongkong. GOPIZZA maintains its quality and efficiency at every one of its locations by using patented in-house technology — The GOVEN, an automatic pizza oven, the ‘GOBOT’ a cooperative robot, and the ‘AI Smart Topping Table’ to ensure timely, standardised quality and service to customers at all outlets.
As we navigate our way to the 2nd floor of the mall to find the vibrantly made outlet in orange and beige colour combination, we were welcomed by their smiling staff. We tasted the Korean Yangnyum Spicy Chicken pops as a starter. The chicken was soft and juicy and went well with the refreshing Guava Chilli Soda and Ginger Mint Lemonade. Next we dived straight into the world of oval pizzas with Korean JMT Creamy Chicken Pizza.
The base was soft, unlike other thin crust pizza bases that we are used to. Next we indulged in Fire Cream Chicken Pasta which had penne pasta tossed in fiery tomato sauce, roasted chicken, sweet corn, jalapeno, red and green capsicum and black olives. We ended our meal with red velvet pastry and a choco lava cake. “As GOPIZZA progresses from its current 20 successful stores in Bengaluru, it aims to establish over 100 operational outlets across the country by the end of 2023. The current Hyderabad outlet is a 30 seater one. Our next target is Chennai,” says Maneesh, the store manager.
Talking about the company’s future plans in Telangana, Mahesh Reddy, CEO, GOPIZZA India, says “Telangana and AP are key strategic growth markets for us and we are looking at opening 50 new outlets together in both states in the next two years.”
After recently raising Rs 200 Cr in the Series C funding, GOPIZZA is excited to bring state-of-the-art food technology to more locations in the fastest-growing market in the world. It aims to establish outlets in Pune, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and other key tier 2 cities including Chandigarh, Jodhpur, Jaipur and Kochi, in the next few years. Globally, encouraged by its successful run in Singapore and South Korea, GOPIZZA is now looking to open into new markets of Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the United States.