Straight to IPO: Meet the Philippines-based startup that listed in London

The team / Photo credit: BigDish

Restaurants across the globe are dealing with a glaringly obvious problem: empty tables. For every hour that goes by, an empty table means owners miss out on revenue that could help offset their rent, utilities, and staff costs.

A number of apps are already trying to solve this. One of them is Manila-based BigDish, which offers users discounts of up to 50 percent when they book restaurants during idle hours.

The early-stage startup calls this “yield management,” a practice long adopted by airlines and hotels. Instead of offering promos that users can avail of anytime – to restaurants’ disadvantage – BigDish’s discounts are time-based.

Now present in Hong Kong, Jakarta, and the UK, BigDish recently made the bold move of listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

The company didn’t take any venture capital and went straight to IPO, raising over US$2.8 million.

While it’s not a sizeable amount, the company prides itself as the first startup from the Philippines to list in London.

BigDish’s co-founder and CEO Joost Boer tells Tech in Asia how it plans to stand out in a highly competitive space, why it chose the IPO route, and more.

How did the idea for BigDish come about? And why did you choose Manila as your HQ?

Why we kicked off in Manila has a couple of practical reasons: for starters, me and the company’s chairman, Aidan Bishop, were both based there. Second, Manila has got some incredible talent and a thriving foodie scene.

I am Dutch. Since the age of 19, however, I’ve spend most my time in Asia-Pacific, having lived in Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. I came to Manila while working for CompareAsiaGroup, a financial comparison platform started by Nova Founders Capital and backed by Goldman Sachs and the World Bank.

Aidan and I were introduced by a mutual friend who also had a tech startup. We started as a restaurant discount card but saw the model was outdated, non-data-driven, and had barriers to scale. We learnt about a company called Savored in New York which was a yield management platform Groupon acquired and subsequently closed. It seemed a smarter business model and this led to our investigation of yield management and its application to the restaurant Industry.

What are the common concerns preventing restaurants from joining discount dining apps? How do you convince them to get on board?

Some restaurants still associate discounts with the daily deal model. We make sure to convey what the differences are: restaurants are in full control over the discounts they give and seats they make available to ensure discounted diners only visit them at the times they want, and in the quantity they want.