Biryani from Arsalan in Kolkata, meals and lassi from Kesar Da Dhaba in Amritsar are among the top food items that users from Delhi-NCR and other regions ordered on JustMyRoots, an inter-city food delivery platform based in Gurugram.
Samiran and Promita Sengupta, a husband-wife duo, founded the company in 2018 – around four years before Zomato entered the segment – while travelling in a flight and overheard another couple stressing over how their kids, getting dropped off at different hostels, would manage their supply of home-made meals.
Fast forward to 2022, the direct-from-home (DFH) unit – where parents can directly send home-cooked meals to family members – is JustMyRoot’s hero product, Sengupta said. Along with DFH, the company also delivers food from one city to another one in about 18-22 hours.
Sengupta assures the company’s patented technology, which includes a cold storage, keeps the food as fresh as it was at the time of cooking, for up to 72 hours. The company currently has two patents: One for the cold storage technology, already in use, responsible to keep the food fresh for up to three days. Next, in three months’ time, JustMyRoots will unveil products and technology that will keep dosa and pizzas, among others, “sizzling hot, not lukewarm, and crispy, for 10 hours after it has been cooked”.
The patents, Sengupta said, were filed in partnership with CSIR-CFTRI (Council of Scientific & Industrial Research) (Central Food Technological Research Institute).
The innovations have helped JustMyRoots to deliver over a million orders since inception, Sengupta said. On an average, the platform delivers a staggering 2,500 orders per day. The company has an average order value (AOV) of about `1,800. JustMyRoots’ AOV was high as per the industry’s average. For comparison, the AOV of Intercity Legends – a pilot Zomato announced in August – stood at `950, already about 2.5X of its intra-city food deliveries, according to reports.
Residents of Delhi-NCR placed about 60% of the JustMyRoots’ orders while biryani from Kolkata, north Indian and Lassi from Amritsar and Kebabs from Lucknow remained their favourites. In all, JustMyRoots was available in about 40 cities and offered choices from over 700 restaurants in India.
The intercity food delivery business accounts for about 80% of the company’s revenue. Sengupta estimated the company would end financial year (FY) 2023 clocking a revenue of `220 crore, up from around `90 crore it generated in FY22. The startup would, however, still incur losses, which will likely stand at around `16 crore in FY23, an increase from `11 crore in the preceding fiscal.
Separately, the DFH arrangement was responsible for about 15% of the company’s revenue, thanks to the `299 it charges customers for every kilogram sent. Those services help JustMyRoots earn around 15% on each order.
JustMyRoots wasn’t the only player betting on the sector. It competes with Tastes2Plate and BSE-listed giants like Zomato.
While industry participants said it was difficult to estimate the market size of intercity food delivery, Zomato said the category had the potential to turn profitable much faster than intra-city food delivery services. Zomato’s intra-city business broke even in the June quarter, after it started operations in 2015.
“It is hard to put a finger on the exact market size of inter-city food delivery. Perhaps, we could say that the entire food delivery segment is the addressable market,” a Zomato executive had earlier said while announcing the company’s quarterly results. “It (Intercity Legends) is built to be profitable. So, we will break even soon,” he added.
Asked how Sengupta was preparing his preparing to compete with larger players, he said, “We always knew the big companies like Zomato will always do a catch up game with us and we were prepared about 18 months back. We started the segment much earlier and our patented technology, along with the restaurant network will help us.”
Separately, “Deepinder (Goyal) sat down with me to understand how inter-city food deliveries work, before Zomato started its own offerings through Inter-city Legends,” Sengupta claimed. He did, however, say that Zomato helped popularise the segment and created customer awareness. JustMyRoots’ business has seen at least a 30% growth just by Zomato’s entry in the space, Sengupta said.
JustMyRoots has so far raised $5 million from high net-worth individuals (HNIs) and is lining up another $15-18 million from global fund houses as the company eyes profitability by March 2024 and an IPO in about three years’ time, as it looks to expand to countries like Singapore, Sengupta concluded.
Source: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMikAFodHRwczovL3d3dy5maW5hbmNpYWxleHByZXNzLmNvbS9pbmR1c3RyeS9kZWxpZ2h0cy1hdC15b3VyLWRvb3JzdGVwcy1iaXJ5YW5pLWZyb20ta29sa2F0YS1sYXNzaS1mcm9tLWFtcml0c2FyLXRvcC1vcmRlcnMtb24tanVzdG15cm9vdHMvMjkyODQ4NC_SAZUBaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZmluYW5jaWFsZXhwcmVzcy5jb20vaW5kdXN0cnkvZGVsaWdodHMtYXQteW91ci1kb29yc3RlcHMtYmlyeWFuaS1mcm9tLWtvbGthdGEtbGFzc2ktZnJvbS1hbXJpdHNhci10b3Atb3JkZXJzLW9uLWp1c3RteXJvb3RzLzI5Mjg0ODQvbGl0ZS8?oc=5
