A breakdown of a new breed of hungry Indian food tech startups

If you have been off of the internet for a week, it is possible you have missed on the emergence of a couple of food tech startups!

That is how hot food tech has been this year in India. Few months back, if you were to talk about food-related startups, you would have mentioned Zomato and Foodpanda, and may be a couple of more smaller players. But that would have been the end of it.

But if you talk about the scenario in this space today, the list is practically endless – I think there were some 50 few friends and I could list when we were having a couple of drinks last night. Here are some that I can recall from the top of my head:

• TinyOwl
• Eatlo
• Swiggy
• Yumist
• SpoonJoy
• Dazo
• Grab.in
• Freshmenu
• Dineout
• HolaChef
• JustEat
• TastyKhana
• Box8
• Eatero

And the list is practically endless. There are countless of startups in different segments of the food tech space, and they are all emulating models that are doing quite well in developed markets – be it in terms of the interest VC firms are showing in them, or in hoarding up traction in their respective domains.

So, what is driving all this interest of the VCs into the food tech startups, and what could the future look like for them? Let’s have a look.

First of all, if you looked at the ‘relatively tiny’ list I just shared above, you would have found some names that sound relatively more familiar as compared to others. Some of that could be attributed to your current location (since a vast majority of the food tech startups are localized to one or two cities right now), and more so because of the space each of them are operating in! Not every food tech startup is the same, and they are catering to different segments altogether:

1. Discovery domain

Both for restaurants as well as dishes; the space primarily and more or less exclusively dominated by Zomato. Every other player in this space is quite small, and has next to nothing when it comes to having a mindshare.

2. Restaurant reservations or Table bookings

Too many small players, but none with a decent mindshare. The only player of note was DineOut that was acquired by TimesCity last year.

3. Restaurant experience enrichment

Support systems that aide you in ordering food before you arrive at the restaurant or even when you are there. Some of them support payments as well. One quite popular example could be the in-house app of the pub BSE in Mumbai that lets users order their drinks via its app.

4. Chef Hosted Dining + Catering and Private Chefs

Online marketplace for chefs – both professional, as well as home based. Too niche a space; there are a few players, but none of them are making many heads turn. This space has not seen much traction even outside of India. Other than KitchenSurfing, there are not many noteworthy players.