Easy Eat, a Singaporean Artificial Intelligence-powered foodtech startup with operations in Malaysia, has closed a new round of funding with a clutch of investors such as Silicon Valley veteran and former Uber chief product officer Manik Gupta.
Exiting investor Bala Chandra (Managing Partner of Vernalis Capital) also participated in the new round, which comes less than a year after its secured its pre-Series A.
Co-founder and CEO Mohd Wassem shared with e27 that Easy Eat will utilise the fresh capital to ramp up its team and regional presence, as the startup is seeing “great adoption and engagement” for its products among F&B outlets in Malaysia.
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The foodtech venture was established in early 2020 by friends Wassem, Rhythm Gupta, Abdul Khalid and Akshay Chauhan.
In a nutshell, Easy Eat digitises all customer-facing interactions in restaurants — from browsing menu, ordering and tracking to payments. It also personalises and rewards users’ dining experience. The firm’s AI solution even suggests customising options based on users’ preferences and history; the more a user uses Easy Eat AI tech, the more personalised it gets.
“F&B is the least digitally-advanced industry globally. Sooner or later, the industry will have to empower its customers to take charge of their ordering, be it dine-in, take-away or delivery,” said Wassem.
“Our technology allows customers to place and customise their orders, request services and make payment via their smart phone. This establishes direct connection between the customer and the restaurant, enabling the latter to promote delivery, take-away or advance bookings,” he explained.
During the COVID-19-induced lockdown, Easy Eat’s restaurant partners generated nearly 60-70 per cent of their pre-lockdown revenue, thanks to its technology. Wassem also claimed that almost 95 per cent of its restaurant partners, which were on-boarded in 2020, are still using its solutions.
According to investor Gupta, even though food delivery is the main focus right now due to the pandemic, dine-out and take-out present multi-billion dollar opportunities.
“Easy Eat has a great product, and its understanding of the market and customers are amazing. It helps restaurant owners weather the ongoing crisis with a new technology stack with a great attention to detail. I’m confident that Easy Eat will become an iconic company which will redefine how dining is done in future,” noted Gupta.
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Southeast Asia’s F&B industry is estimated to be around US$100 billion in size, where majority prefer eating out. In some countries, more than 90 per cent of people consume at least one meal outside a day. Plus, the region has a high female working population. All this bodes well for Easy Eat.
Wassem has previously built and exited Bobble Keyboard, for which he raised multiple rounds of funding from SAIF Partners, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (co-founders of Flipkart), Deep Kalra (founder of MakeMyTrip), Amit Ranjan (co-founder of Slideshare) and Prashant Malik (co-creator of Cassandra).
