Food-tech platform SmartQ raises $1 million funding

Online food-tech platforms SmartQ on Wednesday announced raising funds worth USD 1 million from an investor group led by a consortium of Dubai based investors.

The existing investor, YourNest has also participated in this round. As a part of the arrangements, Anvita Varshney Ex Managing Director of Lazada group has joined as the Board of Advisors for SmartQ. Neeraj Sharma, Ex VP HP Asia Pacific has also been mentoring the SmartQ team from early 2017.

Founded by Krishna Wage and Abhishek Ashok in 2014, the company has immensely grown its product portfolio, customer base, geographical presence and sales turnover. Charting a great success story for itself, SmartQ has been growing 50 percent month-on-month and clocks over 1,00,000+ transactions every day.

SmartQ intends to use the raised funds for expanding the business within India and across international geographies along with further strengthening the team by getting together top talent. Through the funds received, the organization also has plans to roll out some of the world's best and first of its kind product portfolio for the customers.

Addressing various challenges faced by employees and caterers, SmartQ enhances cafeteria and food-court experience by eliminating queues, minimizing wait time, increasing collaborative work time. By enabling corporate employees to place their orders through multiple means, SmartQ implements its innovative and cutting-edge product digital Cafeteria Solutions.

"The funding has enabled all of us at SmartQ to take the organization to the next level of strategic growth and further scaling up on technology, talent and brand building in full swing. With our partners' firm belief in our business strategy and our unique solution-providing capabilities, we look forward to achieve our expansion goals and ultimately fulfil the vision of SmartQ," said co-founder and CEO, SmartQ, Krishna Wage.

"Within a short span of time, SmartQ has been able to build on a huge customer base and has been serving some of the best and large-scale businesses. We were extremely impressed with the splendid work that the organization has been doing by providing end-to-end cutting-edge technology solutions of global standards to all its customers," said ex managing director of Lazada group, Anvita Varshney.

"SmartQ has captured an excellent market share by providing greater customization, choices in product offerings and innovative technology solutions to its customers. SmartQ being the best technology platform for digital cafeteria, is on track to become global leader in digitized cafeteria and food courts tech industry," said managing director and fund manager, Yournest, Sunil K Goyal.

Pioneering the digital cafeteria solutions, SmartQ has aggressively captured the vast market of food courts and cafeterias providing multiple benefits for caterers and food courts.

The digital cafeteria platform of SmartQ includes Mobile application, Automated Billing Kiosks, Centralized Billing System, NFC Prepaid cards, POS software etc.

Younest, an early stage venture capital fund has fully committed the Fund 1, which was of Rs.90 crores, to 16 companies including SmartQ. The Fund was the "Youngest VC Fund" in India to be featured in the top 10 ranking by Returns in Preqin's Ranking of VC and PE funds across Sectors and Vintage. "YourNest India VC Fund II" of Rs.300 crores is focused on leveraging evident unmet funding needs ranging from Rs.4 to 6 crores in its chosen domains.