MUMBAI : In a candid conversation with Akash Shah, the CTO and Co-Founder of Yumzy

1. What triggered you to come up with Yumzy? What inspired you?

Ans. The Indian food ecosystem is facing hard times; aggregators are charging exorbitant charges from restaurants for offering them customer exposure. These made us think about the solutions to save and empower the ecosystem.

2. Please explain about your business? What does Yumzy mean and what are the USP’s of it?

Ans. Yumzy is a dynamic consumer-based application that is accessible to everyone in the Indian F&B marketplace. But, for some specific set of clients yumzy launched a sub-entity namely YumzyX to help the brands cater to their patrons independently. In a nutshell, YumzyX is an innovative direct-to-customer SaaS platform, aiding hyperlocal brands to grow independent of third-party food aggregators. We believe in growing in harmony with the hyperlocal restaurants thereby, helping them scale their services in the industry. As a brand that backbones the hyperlocal industry, we aim to bridge the gap between tech-driven & human resource-driven operations. To conclude, we help those brands as well, that lacks a workforce by offering intelligent tech-driven support to market & promote their services at ease.

3. Where do you operate from? What are the Geographic Locations of your service?

Ans. We started our operations in Hyderabad and as we skyrocketed our operations we gradually expanded the services to PAN India. In addition to catering to the hyperlocal brands, we strive to set up a delivery marketplace in 3 tier cities, where the delivery services are not feasible to the restaurants.

4. What’s your Business model? How has it evolved over the years?

Ans. The market is evolving, and a lot has changed in the food industry, especially in the past 6 months. We saw that there was a dire need to study the transforming industry trends, therefore after deeply analyzing the changing Indian food ecosystem; we came up with a D2C model i.e. (Direct to Customer). Hence, it was a unique model opted by us to help the hyperlocal brands connect directly with their customers.

5. What were the initial challenges? and How did you overcome them?

Ans. The initial challenges which we faced were primarily in terms of market awareness. Since we planned to opt for a completely unique model, we took a substantial amount of time to explain to them the new concept of the D2C model. YumzyX surpassed this challenge by vigorously spreading awareness emails & newsletters to make the restaurant owners aware of how they can make their customers order directly from them.

6. What are the current challenges?

Ans. As the restaurant owners were getting aware of how they could connect with their customers directly by building their own online ordering platform, customers had to stay aware too. After surpassing the challenge of making the restaurant owners aware, we are currently helping the customers understand the value of ordering directly from the restaurant. Therefore, with the D to C model, not only does the restaurant is benefitted but the customer too gets huge discounts & cashback by ordering directly from the restaurant. Hence, we are potentially working towards making the customers cognizant of placing orders directly.

7. Where did you get the seed funding from? Did you bootstrap it initially? Towards what purpose did you use it (infrastructure, staff, technology…)? Please mention all rounds of funding, the amount, and the investors (angel, VCs…)

Ans. Initially, we had to bootstrap our business, but as we were slowly shooting up our operations we were supported by our friends & family. At a later stage, after validating the business model we took funding of 1.2 million market money for majorly developing our tech, marketing & sales team. Hence, after reaching this checkpoint we understood the complexity of marketing interface, sales, growth & other miscellaneous expenses to magnify our operations.

8. How big is the potential for a business like yours?

Ans. I strongly believe that a business model like ours has huge potential in the Indian food industry. India has a wide and diverse F&B market and more & more restaurants are opening up each day. With the constant growth in the Indian food industry, the growth potential has also got higher over the years. YumzyX strives to do something different from what the other companies have been doing, thus we not only cater to the restaurants but the hyperlocal grocery or vegetable stores as well. We believe in helping the restaurant brands flourish independent of any third-party food aggregators. Hence, We are helping the hyperlocal restaurants opt for the Direct to Customer model at minimal costs. Last but not the least, we see potential in our business, because we believe in growing together.

9. What is the ongoing offer?

Ans. We aim to make the operations simple for the hyperlocal brands thereby, streamlining the existing processes. Brands partnering with YumzyX can easily align their customer loyalty programs & seasonal offers to get the maximum customer exposure. In addition, we have integrated with a set of sought-after brands like Myntra, Lenskart, Lakme Salon, Cure Fit, etc. for offering amazing discounts & coupons to the customers ordering from the Yumzy App.

10. Who is your competition (or who comes closest to being your competitor?). What is your USP… key differentiators…?

Ans: On the actual level, we don’t believe in competition, but when we look through a wider perspective then, Dot Pe, Swiggy & Zomato can be seen as our healthy competitors.

11. About Yumzy Mobile Application and How can it be downloaded?

Ans. We have a dynamic mobile application that helps the customers explore the dishes of their choice under a single platform. It can be conveniently downloaded from the Google App store.

12. What is your business goal? What are the expansion plans?

Ans. Our primary business objective is to acquire a max chunk of the market from different types of cities. Following which we plan to expand our operations by unlocking our services for the two and three-tier cities. This in turn would help the restaurant owners of the far-flung areas, who don’t have access to the AI-driven delivery management systems within their vicinity.

13. If people wish to know more about your services how can they contact you?

Ans. They can either contact us by signing up at Yumzyx.com or by scheduling a call with us.

by Sachin Murdeshwar