Ain’t No Tech Like Food Tech. Don’t you miss the days when papers used to write gushy articles about ‘food tech’ apps and founders talked about how technology was at the heart of their business?
If anything can be surmised from this graph it’s that Apps do not equal tech. And they don’t need to. To the (current & future) entrepreneurs in our reading list, I want to emphasize on this point while I have the chance.
Don’t try to force technology in to every business idea just because you think it’s an easy way to get investor capital. Don’t just follow the trend blindly. By the time it’s in the papers it’s usually too late to play.
Every good business doesn’t have to be a technology business.First and foremost it has to make money, have a path to profitability and sound fundamentals. Growing user bases does not equal successes. MAUs & DAUs ain’t putting the kids through school.
OK, back to this chart. Dominos as we’ve noted previously was early to embrace the ‘app economy’. I think they more than anyone else understood that Apps are simply an easier way for people to order — an inevitable interface. They just had to ensure that it fit in with their back end seamlessly.
I can’t even imagine what people are doing with the CCD app. I suppose, it makes a certain kind of sense. Their distribution really is amazing. They’re in every neighborhood so whether you like the coffee or not — you might as well get a discount on it.
All of these companies have a fundamental advantage; they own & create the product themselves. They’re not a platform delivering someone else’s food and trying to make a commission on it. It doesn’t matter to them who wins the delivery wars — Swiggy / Zomato or even Food Panda. They’re trying to grow on the strength of their revenues not banking on subsequent up rounds from investors.
For the likes of Swiggy & Zomato — once they are done slogging it out with each other- the future may well lie in creating ‘private labels’. Zomato’s already testing the waters with it’s ‘cloud kitchen’ concept — why they refuse to just take a real stab at operations is beyond me. If they fail to embrace this like they did with delivery — they may well face the grim prospect of watching Swiggy lift a trophy that was once theirs for the taking.
Thanks for your time,
Ashish
- Team KG
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You can reach me on ashish@kalagato.com
