DineDesk: A High Calibre yet Affordable 360o Solution Accelerating Restaurants' Growth Date:   Wednesday , December 02, 2015 With the rise of disposable income, urbanization and nuclear families, restaurants have transmuted into more than just a place to eat; causing the fine dining industry to grow at a rapid pace of 12 percent. But if you ask whether the restaurants, whose operations are innately intricate, from marketing to dining room management, are they abreast with this growth? The answer is \'No\'. While most restaurants still use traditional paper-based reservation book & feedback mechanism, restaurants using technology wrestle with systems that are complicated to use, expensive to setup and precipitate high recurring costs. Always being in entrepreneurial mode, Ahmed Sharief (Founder, DineDesk) perceived this phenomenon during business lunches and decided to translate it into a business opportunity. Investigating further, Ahmed heard grievances regarding operational & marketing issues in restaurants from a group of friends who were restaurant operators. Due to dearth of integration, the tools force restaurants to work with multiple vendors, learn many systems, often purchase special hardware, and remember endless passwords for diverse needs including reservations, operations, marketing, order taking, feedback and so on. \"This made us think why not offer an \'Affordable\' solution with 360o suite of tools, a solution that could assist in managing reservations to operations and feedback,\" Ahmed briefs the inception story behind DineDesk, a next generation, cloud based reservation, table management system and marketing platform for the restaurants.His resolve further strengthened when the research company he hired transpired appealing results. Led by people with decades of experience in restaurant industry, DineDesk charted out its roadmap based unambiguously, which made it easy to understand the challenges, evaluate them and craft an efficient product that is easy to learn & use. DineDesk at several phases released the product to few beta customers, took their inputs and refined the product; thus decreasing the learning curve substantially. Today a restaurant staffer can learn it in minutes with very little help. The efficient use of DineDesk, made it possible for restaurants to be staff independent.Founded in April 2014 and launched beta version in October 2014, the Hyderabad headquartered company has already proved its worth by signing up close to 120 restaurants and partners across India, U.S., UAE, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines within months. Ahead of the Curve While billion dollar players such as OpenTable are unable to expand to developing countries due to technology constraints and pricing model, DineDesk\'s current addressable market includes an exhaustive number of 2,90,000 restaurants that take reservations, engage in social media, or promote themselves online. \"There is a worldwide demand for quality restaurant management software, and DineDesk is moving quickly to satisfy this demand in all corners of the world. We are pushing ahead in places like Singapore, Dubai, Thailand and South Africa, where our American competitors can\'t complete,\" asserts a determinedAhmed Sharief, Founder, DineDesk. Intuitive and easy to use, DineDesk\'s continuously evolving technology platform helps to manage and market a restaurant, encompassing every aspect of restaurant management withthe core features of Online Reservations, Table Management, Wait List Management, Guest CRM, Feedback, Marketing, Analytics and Statistics. Enriched with enthusiastic, young and eager individuals, who perceive the world differently, DineDeskians aim higher, dream bigger and explore further. They firmly believe in being quick on their feet, harbouring grand visions of the community of food lovers and working with the best and brightest that comes in their way. DineDesk takes pride in the fact that it facilitates DineDeskians to derive the best of working at a startup under the guidance of people who have worked with Fortune 500 Consulting firms. Making its Presence Felt DineDeskis working on launching its B2C business ReserveDine (rdine.com), a Restaurant discovery, Reservation, Reviews, Analytics & Content driven platform. User experience and verified content being its peculiar hallmark, this platform is expected to be unique from discovery portals in market. The company envisions adding up close to 3000 restaurants on ReserveDine, while expanding its B2B product DineDesk to acquire 1000 restaurants by end of 2016. By the mid of next year, DineDesk will be rolling out its billing component, easy-to-use point of sale system on iPad & Android tablets and release big analytics that would give insights on customer behavior, satisfaction & overall restaurant industry. The company that has raised $100,000 from angel investors now endeavors to raise $500,000 for scaling up the business, refining its business model, growingpartnership network to launch DineDesk to several other countries, building sales force across different geographies, expand its team of management and advisory board among others. It also aims to build its network of reselling partnerships across U.S., Australia, Japan, China, Latin America, Europe and Middle East in coming years. Wishing to achieve organic growth quickly, DineDesk intends to show a growth rate of about 45 percent in revenues. Truly a disrupter of business models, envisaging \'Making things Easier\' in this vast ecosystem of restaurant industry, DineDesk is irrefutably making its presence felt. Panel: Key Management: Ahmed Sharief, Co-Founder Focused on innovation, Ahmed orchestrates the entire India operation for DineDesk, showing himself equally adept at staff, product and project management. Ahmed also excels at new business development and signing partners around the world. Offering: A Premium yet Affordable Online Restaurant Reservations & Table Management System Headquarter: Hyderabad Achievements: - Hot 100 Technology Company of 2014 by CIO Choice - Best Enterprise Startup of 2015 by Startups World Network