Digital service provider to restaurants, Petpooja, on Monday said it has raised $4.5 million (around ₹33.5 crores) as a part of a new funding round led by Aroa Ventures, the family office of Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal.
The round also saw participation from GVFL, Udaan, Dr Mayur Desai, and other angel investors.
The company plans to use the funding to target 1.5 lakh outlets for its platform over the next two years. The funds will also be utilized for further international expansion across the Middle East and the African regions.
Seven-year-old Petpooja provides an operating system to restaurants, which includes inventory management, customer relationship management (CRM), online ordering, payments, and analytics.
“The simplicity of our product, combined with 24×7 support, is exactly what SMBs (small and medium businesses) need to automate operations and bring in efficiency in a highly competitive foodservice market.
Foodservice has been the most digitized market with over 100 B2C players in the field, including delivery aggregators, dine-in ordering, online ordering, table reservation, loyalty, payments, ERP, etc. Our 100 integrations allow restaurateurs to manage and interact with all these players from a single screen,” said Parthiv Patel, co-founder of Petpooja.
Petpooja’s core focus has been largely on individual outlets and small chains. The company also works with large food chains including JumboKing, Hocco, La Pino’s, Thalappakatti, Giani’s, Apsara Ice Creams, and more.
At present, Petpooja’s software powers over 25,000 outlets across India, UAE, and Africa, with over 1.5 million daily orders logged on the platform recording an annualized gross merchandise value of $2.5 billion.
“The pandemic has been a watershed moment for the foodservice industry as on the one hand consumers demanded digital touchpoints while on the other hand margins were under severe stress.
Given the current industry outlook and the evolution, large-scale technology adoption is imperative to increase the efficiency of operations, control pilferage, manage online channels and keep costs under control. In our journey to empower and digitize SMEs across India, it was inspiring to witness how Petpooja’s founders & team were doing the same for restaurants,” said Amod Malviya, co-founder, Udaan.
“After more than a year of living under covid-19 induced lockdowns and restrictions, the foodservice industry is getting back on track. Now, more than ever, restaurateurs need to take advantage of a product like Petpooja to seamlessly handle their operations and order management tasks,” said Gaurav Gulati, head, Aroa Ventures
Petpooja launched the Supplier’s Hub in 2020, allowing restaurateurs to connect with suppliers in a fragmented market. They have already onboarded over 5000 suppliers and are looking to onboard 50,000 suppliers in the next 2 years.
