TripAdvisor-backed restaurant reservation app Eatigo has entered the Indian market with the acquisition of Ressy, an app that provides last-minute deals and discounts at restaurants.
With the acquisition, the Bangkok-headquartered company will start operations in Mumbai and Pune, a company statement said. Ressy’s co-founder Koustubh Rajepandhare will serve as Eatigo’s India country head, his LinkedIn profile shows.
Eatigo connects empty tables at restaurants with customers and offers them time-based discounts at its partner outlets. The company has over 2,000 restaurants on its platform across Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
“We’re excited to continue extending Eatigo’s reach – this time moving out of Southeast Asia, where we’ve served over 5 million diners. We’re especially confident because our acquisition of Ressy’s operations definitely complements our existing business model,†Michael Cluzel, co-founder and chief executive officer of Eatigo said.
The startup was founded by Cluzel along with Siddhanta Kothari, Judy Tan and Pumin Yuvacharuskul in 2013. The company has raised about $15.5 million so far including a $10 million round it secured from travel giant TripAdvisor in October last year.
Eatigo offers time-based discounts to users. While it guarantees a minimum discount of 10% at peak hours, the company claims to offer discounts up to 50% during off-peak hours. On the restaurant front, Eatigo charges a license fee from its partner outlets for the service.
Pune-based Ressy Technology Pvt Ltd, the firm behind the Ressy app, was founded in March 2015 by Rajepandhare and Sagar Patil. The mobile app provides up to 50% discount at local restaurants in real-time. It also offers platform discovery, discounts, and offers, time-bound activations, capacity and inventory management in addition to location specific, time-bound deals.
The company claims to be working with over 1,200 restaurants in Mumbai and Pune.
Ressy has raised $750,000 in two rounds of funding since 2015. In one of the rounds, it raised $400,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in seed funding from Eight Capital’s founding partner Vikram Chachra and other investors, using the crowd funding platform LetsVenture. Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and former member of Infosys’ board; Akshay Garg, co-founder of Komli Media; Jeljo Joh Kottor, director, ProV Venture Investments (Singapore), and Ketharaman Swaminathan, founder of GTM360 were the other investors who invested in this round.
