THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A team of three entrepreneurs from the state capital has launched a new startup that allows customers to place their food orders from multiple restaurants on a single bill and get them picked up at designated locations in a hassle-free manner.
The smart kiosk product -- VendiGo -- will be launched in Thiruvananthapuram city soon. VendiGo is an initiative of Versicles Technologies, a fledgling startup of Manoj Dethan (founder-CEO), Aneesh Suhail (founder-CTO), and Kiran Karunakaran, (an investor with experience in the e-commerce sector).
The virtual food court allows customers to place orders from multiple restaurants in a single order, said Manoj. “One can order soup, biriyani, noodles, dessert, and even Italian takeout from different local restaurants without paying separately,” he says.
VendiGo hosts a curated list of top restaurants, cafes, and bakeries in the city and provides them with an e-commerce platform through which they can take orders and have them delivered through a pickup kiosk near the customer. “The customer can choose the pick-up location and time while placing an order through the portal. The ordering system is integrated with the payment gateways and once payment is successful, the customer will get an OTP with the kiosk box number for pick-up,” he said.
Some of the kiosks will also have a cloud kitchen set up which helps the restaurants expand to a new virtual location and transform their digital customer experience. VendiGo takeout kiosks can be placed in restaurants or malls or any convenient location of the restaurants.
According to Suhail, VendiGo is Thiruvananthapuram’s first ‘multi-restaurant ordering’ platform and has the potential to emerge as the future of the food takeout and delivery segment. “We’re revolutionising the restaurant industry by automating operations. We seek to minimise costs and maximise profits by prioritising seamless delivery,” says Karunakaran.
Our mission is to enable people with a passion for cooking become an entrepreneur without an upfront investment, he said. “Opening a typical quick-service restaurant can easily cost 10 lakh and then the restaurant owner has to spend on marketing and software. Whereas VendiGo is a ‘retail as service’ concept through which we provide all the physical and digital infrastructure for a fee,” he said.