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Noida-based Pocketin, a real-time restaurant deal startup, has raised $150K in a seed round of funding from Hong Kong based Swastika Company Ltd. The startup aims to consolidate the eating-out space.
Pocketin was founded in 2015 by Kshitij Mehra, Anirudh Mondal, Rahul Arora, Siddharth Sharma and Akshay Utreja. The startup provides a platform for diners to discover, compare, and choose where they want to head out next, based on real-time deals offered, events happening around the diner, or pertaining to specific activity the diner might have in mind (group packages, buffets, etc.).
Pocketin’s autopilot technology provides curated deals to respective diners in the absence of the merchant on the platform.
The raised capital will be utilised to expand across Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, and Gurgaon. It will also help in building the core team and strengthen the core product offering.
Kshitij Mehra, CEO at Pocketin, said, “We aim to create a platform, which not only helps people discover new restaurants but also make their experience pocket-friendly, by offering them the best possible deals/discounts through our unique real-time deal discovery and comparison engine. We also understand that, for a diner, along with the price, convenience matters a lot, which is why we have a dedicated operations workforce which ensures that every customer has a delightful and hassle-free table reservation and deal redemption experience at the restaurant.”
Pocketin has grown organically in the last four months and the growth has been mostly driven by word-of-mouth referrals. The company has more than 8000 downloads and have seated more than 6500 diners.
It aims to partner with more than 1200 restaurants in Delhi NCR in the next six months, and seat more than 1 lakh diners. It has plans to expand operations to Mumbai, Bangalore and Dubai in the next phase. Besides, with its current team size of 15, Pocketin looks to double its team in the coming months.
“Our aim right now is to create a more intuitive experience for the user. The data points we are capturing on the platform is much more than what similar apps in the food-tech domain are able to capture, because of the detailed interaction our app has with the user. This will help us to suggest the user more relevant restaurants and deals when he is looking for them without him having to make all that effort,” said Anirudh Mondal, COO at Pocketin.
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