Network includes 5,000 restaurants in NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh & Pune.
KhauGaliDeals.com, the restaurant discovery and discount deals portal, is raising INR 75 lakh in an angel round from a group of investors, including Sanjay Coutinho, CEO, Baskin Robbins, South Asia & NRAI managing committee member.
Coutinho is investing INR 25 lakh in the venture in his personal capacity (his first in a start-up) along with G.K. Sinha, a former PepsiCo India Holdings executive, who’s investing a similar amount for an undisclosed stake.
“I funded them because I found the team to be very focussed & bright. They have an excellent combination of content & online ordering transactions, which are both ends of the spectrum. India has 18 million smartphone users & KhauGaliDeals has the potential to be the leader, if not, then a very close second in this huge market,” said Coutinho.
Kartik Saboo, co-founder of KhauGaliDeals, did not name the other two investors who participated in the round. KhauGaliDeals Pvt. Ltd, the holding company, expects to close the round in mid-August.
Money raised in this round will be used to enter 25 new cities and add more restaurants to the platform over the next six months. The company is also looking to raise an additional INR 5-6 crore in its first venture capital round in September. Money raised in the venture capital round will be utilised for marketing the brand and customer retention.
“The current round is more focused on content development. Once we develop the content, we would need to do branding so as to compete with competitors. That’s why we are looking for an immediate second round. So that we can utilise that content and do some branding to retain customers,” said Saboo.
KhauGaliDeals currently covers about 5,000 restaurants in the National Capital Region, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Pune. It is entering Udaipur this week; it will add 300 restaurants to the platform, founded in 2012.
Apart from Chennai, the only major metro not on the platform currently, the next phase of expansion will be dominated by tier-II and -III cities.
Saboo and co-founder Supriya Saboo started KhauGaliDeals in 2012 with funds raised from family and personal savings. The website has 35,000 monthly visitors and its Android application has been downloaded 11,000 times since its launch in January. The company will introduce an app for iOS in the middle of August.
