Start-up seeks to tap $1b Pakistani restaurant market

Food Connec­tion helps busine­sses intera­ct with their custom­ers on the web.

KARACHI:

With conservative estimates suggesting that Pakistanis spend close to $1 billion a year on dining out, a number of technology start-ups are seeking to cash in on this highly lucrative market, seeking gains from a consumer market of 180 million people.

Given that there are more than 25,000 outlets that can loosely be classified as “restaurants”, a common strategy by technology companies has been to try to document a significant portion of the market; offering dining options, menus, locations, even tips on what to eat.

One such company is Food Connection Pakistan, the brainchild of its CEO Nauman Sikandar Mirza, who has previously worked with TSG Global UK and Akaash – a restaurant that serves Indian and Pakistani cuisine in the UK. He is assisted on the technology front by Rai Umair, who has served in Fortune 500 companies across four continents.

The company, which was only launched last year, is already achieving some measure of success. Monthly page-views are up to 130,000, with a Facebook fan-base of close to 65,000. Crucially for any start-up, it appears to have been able to monetise its traffic, generating Rs2 million in revenues last quarter.

The concept of the company was relatively simple: while most of the 25,000 or so dining-out places in Pakistan are of low quality, FCP found through its own research that there are approximately 2,000 that can be considered higher-end. Most of those restaurants have virtually no online presence and very few of them have any meaningful connection with the customers who dine there.

“That’s where we thought there was an opportunity. We found that, of the 600 A-quality restaurants in Karachi, only about 200 or so are online,” said Mirza. In an era where social media is becoming increasingly popular, having no web presence is not sustainable for restaurants looking to make connections with the customers for repeat business.

“We wanted to build that connection with the localised format of Foods Connection,” he said.

There are, of course, other websites that already do this, the most well-known of which is probably Karachi Snob, which has its counterparts in Lahore and Islamabad as well. But Mirza insists that his company is different, and better.

“Firstly, we are nationwide. We cover eight major cities,” he said. “And we offer around 500 value-added searches, such as the best breakfast deals or buffet offers, for example.”

The company has also offered what it claims is an innovation that no other service in Pakistan offers: an “activity page” where people collect points in eight categories – reserve, suggest a restaurant, rate and review, comment on FC to name a few – and claim coupons to avail the benefits.

The page has the dual advantage of retaining traffic on the website in addition to enhancing its quality by providing more information. Nonetheless, FCP has a team of 18 fulltime employees who are constantly checking the veracity of the information on the website and adding to it every day. Industry sources say that the website does not wait for businesses to list on it, but rather proactively contacts them.

Businesses have an added incentive to seek a listing on FC Pakistan: any feedback the website receives about a restaurant is e-mailed instantly to the proprietor of that restaurant, offering valuable insight to small-business owners.

“These reviews are independent, since people log in using their Facebook accounts to use the rating and comment system,” said Umair.

The ultimate goal of the company appears to be to help improve quality and lower prices for Pakistani diners. “People want good food at an affordable price,” said Mirza. He reckons that the website needs 700,000 visitors a month to have a substantial impact on the market.

The restaurant business, however, is not the only one that Mirza hopes to revolutionise with internet-based visibility. “We will soon be introducing similar platforms for the fashion and wedding industries,” he said.

(Read: FCP’s dining revolution disappoints)

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2012.