Tripadvisor dishes out series B to Eatigo to ‘connect empty stomachs with empty tables’

Photo credit: ygai / 123RF.

Tech giant Tripadvisor has invested in fast-growing restaurant booking service Eatigo, the startup announced today.

Eatigo, which came into the limelight in May last year as a contestant in Tech in Asia‘s Arena pitch battle, specializes in off-peak bookings in order to help restaurants fill tables that are usually empty. It operates in Singapore and the Thai cities of Bangkok and Pattaya. The aim, the team says, is that the service “connects empty stomachs with empty tables. No coupons or pre-payment of any sort is required.”

This funding will be used for expansion, explains Michael Cluzel, Eatigo’s CEO and co-founder, speaking over Skype from the crew’s Bangkok HQ. That means more Southeast Asian nations, but he’s keeping mum on which country is next.

“We have feet on the ground in some [new] markets, off the radar. So there’s definitely work going on already,” he says.

Eatigo’s Michael Cluzel pitching onstage at our Singapore conference in May 2015. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

The exact sum from Tripadvisor (which comes via its global restaurant reservation brand, TheFork) isn’t revealed, except that Eatigo’s undisclosed series A in December plus this series B amounts to US$15.5 million.

Southeast Asia focus

Michael says the service now has 700 restaurants listed across its three cities.

“We’re driving traffic to merchants when they want the traffic, when they need the traffic to guarantee them actual income in their pockets,” he says. This is how it differs from most reservation startups, which pile in people at peak times. For eating a bit earlier or later than the hordes, Eatigo users get discounts of up to 50 percent.

It gives us the means to do what we want to do.

“Every merchant that we have is discounted all day every day – and every merchant at some point in the day will have to offer 50 percent discount slots,” he explains.

“I’m a very heavy user,” he laughs. He uses the service, which has an app as well as a website, around four times per week.

Eatigo’s four co-founders are a multinational bunch, hailing from India, Singapore, Thailand, and – in Michael’s case – from Germany via French-Swiss citizenship.