If you take one typewriter and build 100, you’ve made horizontal progress. If you have a typewriter and build a word processor, you have made vertical progress. With that in mind, Grub-bite started its journey in the populous Urban Agglomeration of Jamshedpur which showered it with all its love. Grub-bite is a startup that aims at serving delight, not just food to its customer. With no investor, the startup sustained on the equity capital provided by its cofounders during its run in the Chota Nagpur plateau. As the cofounders gained experience and the startup matured, it moved to the Nagar Nigam of Kashipur. Kashipur is a tier 3 city and hence offered different geographical, demographical, cultural and economic constraints to it. The services were decided to be limited to the students of Indian Institute of Management, Kashipur for its experimental run.
The Startup began its new phase in Kashipur in the hands of its new members, namely Shashank Shekhar, Rohit Vohra, Nilesh Pandey, Ginny Tewatia and Jeewanjot Singh. The startup offered them something that they believed to have lost somewhere, the zeal. It was never an easy going for the newer members of the startup family as they were challenged with operational, logistics and various other problems on the very first day of its operation. To tackle these problems, the members needed to come up with a strategy that would enhance the overall efficiency of the system. Hence, they decided to divide the working into 5 functional departments, with each member being assigned a definite role in the overall chain. The startup collaborated with a number of eminent food partners such as Dominoes, Pizza Bite, Chawla’s etc. These partners agreed to offer a discount of 10% or more if the startup were successful in getting them with a requisite minimum number of customers and orders. Although this venture enjoyed an income of Rs 80 on the very first day, it could not earn a net profit owing to enhancing logistic costs. Logistics costs and customer service were the pivotal elements that needed to be taken care of, or else it could jeopardise the entire startup. Thus, the members decided to collaborate with the individual who was responsible for running the night canteen in one of the hostels. Since he owned a motorbike, he was well suited to act as the delivery man for this venture and was the most feasible alternative. The customers pertaining to Kashipur were more inclined towards ordering food using the traditional old school method of oral ordering. Although, an app and a website were operational, the cofounders decided to use the traditional method of taking orders orally to match and respect the thinking of its customers. This posed a new problem, it was difficult to maintain databases using this offline mode of transaction. Thus, it was decided that one of the team members would upload the financial data over the server at the end of each day. 2 Our First Customers of Grub-Bite On the first Day itself. The startup is believed to run throughout the day terminating at 11 PM during the night. The orders are taken till 10:30 in the night. Thus, it offers a piece of joy for the students toiling hard with their assignments, projects and with themselves.
The startup, though in its nascent stages has an offering that nothing else has been able to provide to its cofounders: the necessary zeal and satisfaction that was believed to be lost somewhere taking them to a whole new domain and realm where they compete with their difficulties, challenges and above all, with themselves
Milestone Achieved :-
Rs 5000 orders in the 2nd week
Rs 7000 Orders in the 4th week
Upcoming plans By Grub-bite:-
Cooking competition
Supplying juice in morning.
The article is being shared by Grub Bite, a venture of Five IIM Kashipur PGP2015-17 Students