An after-party conversation held in a small flat located in Pune led to the world’s largest food delivery platform consisting of over 300 cloud kitchens. Interesting, Right?
Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee possess the brains behind this inspiring idea of building a part-time business of Indian “Food on demand” service in 2011 into a vast cloud kitchen restaurant generating 10,000 orders per day in 2015.
By 2019, the company was operating 235 kitchens in 20 major cities of India.
Please scroll further to learn more about this fascinating journey which started with a conversation over rum and coke by two people who wanted to introduce some Kolkata taste in Pune.
Birth Story
Fasoos, born under the parent company Rebel Foods, focuses on introducing Indian food items to McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and other famous brands of western cuisine.
Initially, Fasoos was introduced as an open kitchen food outlet in Pune, a place to satisfy customers’ hunger looking for some Indian quick bites. Jaydeep himself came up with this idea to avoid the situation of an empty stomach while living away from his family.
He wanted to bring together the street food (wraps, biryanis, and rolls) and the western culture of hygiene and quality into the food industry of India. The outlet was able to take orders, prepare fresh beverages, and deliver the order to the customer within no time.
It became the first outlet in the world to set up a Twitter account to receive orders through tweets, and within a few months, the company grew from one outlet to 6 outlets in Pune.
Funding Story
The popularity and strategy of keeping the fixed prices low started to compel investors like Sequoia Capital and hence received a funding of $5 million from the same by 2011.
Later, the company expanded to 16 restaurants in Pune and Mumbai while setting up its official website, enabling customers to place orders quickly.
Fasoos converted its business to an app-only food service by introducing its mobile application in 2014, which catalysed Fasoos growth. It started to receive 80% of orders from the app and received 30,000 orders in a month.
Let me now briefly give you a few insights about the company’s fundings in 2015. The Second funding was received in February, which was $20 million.
Later in December, the company raised its third round of funding of $30 million. In 2019, investors like Go-Jek, Goldman Sachs, and Coatue Management invested $125 million in the incredible growth of Fasoos.
Growth and Struggle Story
Fasoos was founded by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee, both having no experience in the food and beverage industry but working consistently to build up a brand.
Yielded fresh products delivery on doorsteps took patience and hard work of 10 years to convert one outlet of Pune to 235 kitchens in 20 major cities in India.
Fasoos is a ‘food on demand’ service and a story of two people who followed their inside voice of entrepreneurs and never gave up amid the struggle phase of expansion of Fasoos.
During the opening of the Mumbai outlet after success in Pune, the founders hit their rock-bottom and were on the verge of quitting Fasoos as they could not hire the right people to run the Mumbai outlet struggled with the licenses in the city.
Fasoos came up with the concept of ‘entrepreneur-in-residence hiring to fix the problem of hiring the right people. They mentioned that the interested candidates needed to have zero experience in the food industry.
If any submission of a CV was made, then it will eventually result in their rejection. Fasoos was able to build up a team of eight who worked seven days a week and were ever ready to contribute to the overall growth of Fasoos.
Author’s Thoughts
Fasoos is a vague after-party talk that later converted into India’s biggest cloud kitchen platform and is undoubtedly a story that inspires the young entrepreneur inside you to keep working with unshakable focus and an unbreakable spirit.
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