Shachin Bhardwaj was your typical IT engineer, a bachelor who stayed back late to enjoy dinner on company account. The atypicality was in applying his IT skills to structure the offerings of all the delivery and take-away joints in Pune. What started off as an Excel sheet which was shared on mail with colleagues morphed into Tastykhana.in

It has been an appetizing journey, with lots of ‘learning’ courses. Ver 1 involved trying to become the ordering back-office for Pune restaurants. This involved scanning menus, taking table reservations and doing party bookings. However the response was not too great, with the exceptions being his small loyal set of friends, who would use his site to order. One of his mentors advised him that what restaurants were actually looking at was a ‘complete’ solution. So Ver 2 came in – using the company’s own delivery.

A small 3 person company, Food-on-Wheels was acquired with a small bit of cash and equity. The big change in mindset was that now the company started seeing cash in its galla every evening. Now cash is what gives confidence in business, so Shachin and Company expanded its delivery team from 3 to almost 70. And started seeing another set of problems – pilferage, managing unskilled labor, strikes, order jams at 8 pm – everyone wanting service in exactly 30 minutes.

Ver 3 saw them re-pivot the business model, moving away from deliveries, but retaining the cash-inflows. This saw failure rates (in terms of failed deliveries) plummeting from an embarrassing 30% to a more sedate 3%. They also lucked on to funds from a European investor – DeliveryHero. The investor pressurized the team to look at its initiatives from the perspective of scaling up. Two things which Shachin had to do, which were against his strictly middle class upbringing: Start paying high salaries to attract talent and start spending on marketing. The company moved on to being present in 160 cities and started experimenting with schemes. Some of the client restaurants do try to entice customers to order directly with them. But customers don’t always want to go back to the same restaurants. From Indian to Chinese, TastyKhana has it all. The aim is to be the Google of Meals. Also the guy who collects the money in the business is king. Customers have to pay by credit card before the meal. And to add to the fun, the Tasty guys only make payments to restaurants at the end of the month. Juicy management of working capital!

One of the blockbuster marketing initiatives was in Jul 2013. The Congress spokeperson, Raj Babbar reacting to charges on inflation, said it was possible to have ” full meal at Rs 12 in Mumbai” even today, becoming a big hit with Netizens. TastyKhana on that day offered meals at Rs. 12! (A 288 discount voucher was issued for a 300 Rs. Value meal). Twitteratis and Whatsappians picked up the offer. Orders jumped from 1000 per day to 50,000 per day.. Today with economies of scale, you can order even Domino’s Pizza from TastyKhana. And the pitch to the customer is simple. You come to TastyKhana when you are hungry – and then decide. One site which remembers your tastes and preferences. In parting, Shachin mentions that they are confident of overtaking Domino’s own website very soon as far as online orders are concerned.

PS: One month after the talk, the company got sold to foodpanda.com by its owners Delivery Hero.

Here is the site: www.tastykhana.in