Advent of Food Tech Apps in India

A Confused Consumer of the Food Tech Industry / Apps

       

Contents

• Introduction
• Various Food Tech Apps in the Market
• Categories of Food Tech Apps
• Awareness
• Market Size & Revenues
• Pros
• Cons

Introduction

With the growth of the startup space right from e-commerce giants to online cab providers and real estate, entrepreneurs are now focussed in building tech envisioned food marketplace in India. Couple of years when we think of food search and delivery platforms only few names would sprout up like Zomato and Food Panda. But then with the evolving startup ecosystems in tier1 cities like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, the tech driven food start-ups have mushroomed to new heights. Presently if you count food tech start the number of players has exponentially increased; the list goes endless with more than 15 players competing with value proposition to gain their market share.

For Indian’s food is almost a religion. With the ever increase rise in better income, livelihood and strong background, the consumption of food has increased than before. Looking at the massive market opportunity it is helping the food tech business to gain traction from investor interest on funding them.

Various Food Tech Apps in the Market

Categories of Food Tech Apps Food apps can be broken down into various categories, viz., Online Ordering & Delivery apps - For eg. Pizza Hut, McDonalds. Fasoos etc. Aggregator delivery apps - Swiggy, FoodPanda, TastyKhana etc. Reviews & Menus - Zomato, Freshmenu. Table Reservation Apps - BytPlus, BookMyTable, TableGrabber etc. Deals and Discounts Apps - Little, Dishco, Dishem etc.

Awareness

With so much of advancement in technology and so with all the tech-savvy and the not so techie folks might still not be using these apps just because they are not aware. When we spoke to a few people in Bangalore most of them were aware of Zomato and Foodpanda. Many people were not aware of tablebookings or SpoonJoy where you can order a healthy Tofu dish to your home at Rs.99/- free delivery. Lot of people have seen folks with the Swiggy T-Shirts but never really used it and not sure what they do.

Food Tech Apps generally can use some or all of the below tools for better awareness of their apps to people and local market.

• Social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.
• Social forums. eg- Quora
• News and media.
• Banner Adverstisements.
• Promotional Campaigns (Google Adwords).
• Events.

Market Size & Revenues

The market size for food in India, which was estimated at Rs 23 lakh-crore in 2014, is set to reach a whopping Rs 42 lakh-crore by 2020, as predicted by Boston Consulting Group. Another special trait of the food industry is that many people strongly believe that it tends to fare better in times of an economic crisis because of the ever hungry consumers’ desire for more variety.
Lets face it! People eat. And they eat thrice a day. Expats and migrants from other states tend to eat out more and spend money on food.
The food tech apps have bridged the gap between restaurants/eateries and tech savvy consumers, the couch potatos, the deal grabbers and more...
VCs from the United States and all over are heavily focused on the Indian food tech market with 3.5 billion dollars spent in the first few months of 2015 alone..

Pros

• Massive market to cater to variety of different ordering behaviour.
• Reduce the pain of consumers in getting the right food with an access to an App.
• Better profit margin with the integration of technology and right resources.
• High traction of foreign investors in helping food entrepreneurs in scaling up the technology. hence thereby bringing investments for the country too.

Cons

• Retaining and building loyal customers.
• Catering high quality food based on different customers interests.
• Proper maintenance of the logistics, operations and packaging to function efficiently.
• Build bespoke business models and strong tech team to get over the competitors.