UrbanPiper, a restaurant management platform that processes 18% of all online food orders in India, has raised $24 million in a new financing round from a number of investors including Swiggy and Zomato, the three firms said Monday.
The six-year-old startup’s Series B funding was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global. Pankaj Chaddah, a founder of Zomato, Ankit Nagori of Curefoods, and Khadim Bhatti and Vara Kumar are among some angels who have also invested in the round.
The vast majority of restaurants that sell online tend to maintain businesses with multiple food delivery startups. This typically means that the staff at those restaurants have to manage multiple firms’ management apps and painstakingly track order flows and inventory on all services.https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.0.1/safeframe.html
UrbanPiper operates a one-stop app that syncs inventory and commerce flows with multiple services at once.
“For many restaurants, it’s not feasible for food delivery firms to offer them the system, dashboard, detailed analysis on billing and invoicing. We are able to deliver on that. When we all come together, we can all probably do a better job and move the industry forward,” said Saurabh Gupta, co-founder, and chief executive of UrbanPiper, told TechCrunch in an interview. “These chains, their volumes were too high and at that scale, they could not operate multiple dashboards.”
The startup now processes 40 million orders a month, up from the 2 million it processed in 2019 when it raised its Series A funding, he said. “We have also grown the number of restaurants we serve by 10 times,” he added.
UrbanPiper has also expanded to seven nations outside of India, including some in MENA and EU. With the proliferation of food delivery firms, restaurants across the globe are facing similar challenges, he said.
“UrbanPiper is one of our key partners enabling us to seamlessly engage with restaurants and scale faster through their point-of-sale solutions. Addressing specific needs, the team has always found ways to bridge gaps by creating a win-win for both restaurants and Swiggy. We are excited about the market potential and look forward to scaling our partner network with their continued support,” said Sriharsha Majety, chief executive of Swiggy, in a statement.
