Oddle’s revenue drops, loss widens in FY 2022 as food delivery slows

Oddle founder Jonathan Lim / Photo credit: Oddle

Oddle, an F&B software-as-a-service startup, reported S$15 million (US$11.1 million) in revenue for the nine-month period ended December 31, 2022, according to financial statements filed with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA).

If annualized, the amount is a 37.5% drop from the S$32 million (US$23.7 million) revenue it earned for the financial year ended March 31, 2022. Meanwhile, the Singapore-based firm’s loss for the year widened to S$5.6 million (US$4.1 million) – on an annualized basis, it was more than 2x its loss for the previous financial year.

The company had changed its financial year-end from March 31 to December 31 that year.

“During the height of the pandemic, our delivery volume surged due to lockdown measures. As restrictions eased and dining out resumed, we anticipated a natural decline in delivery volume,” an Oddle spokesperson told Tech in Asia.

Shift toward data

The company had found traction in the thick of the pandemic, as it offered a food delivery solution for restaurants that had no presence online.

The delivery business “remains capital efficient, which allowed us to invest in and experiment with new ideas that we couldn’t explore before,” the spokesperson noted. However, anticipating an industry-wide drop in volume after the pandemic, the company shifted its “focus to helping restaurants grow their sales through data.”

Here, it made bets on three key areas: reservations, payment terminals, and QR code-based ordering. Oddle said it saw “great traction” on its restaurant reservation product from 2021 to 2022, so the company invested “heavily” on the offering.

“Despite entering the market later than many incumbents, we chose not to charge for our reservation solution until we achieved feature parity with industry peers,” the spokesperson said, adding that they only started to charge for the service in Q2 2024.

Its payment terminals offering, while a significant contributor to its revenues in 2022, only offered “low margins.” Its QR code-based ordering solution, meanwhile, was eventually dropped as Oddle failed to differentiate from competitors.

As of the end of FY 2022, Oddle had approximately S$10 million (US$7.4 million) in cash and cash equivalents. In April 2023, however, the company laid off about 25% of its staff across its four markets of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.

While the company shared with Tech in Asia that it was in talks with a potential investor, nailing down fresh investments “has not been easy given the funding winter.”

“Finding the right investor was critical for us, not just someone who would put in money,” the spokesperson said, adding that there should be further updates later this year.

Moving forward, the focus will be on data. One example is Check-in Rewards, an offering that integrates “multiple digital touchpoints” for restaurants, powered by Oddle’s customer data platform.