Speaking to TechGraph, Kushang, Co-founder & CEO of SupplyNote has said, “Food aggregators now control a sizable portion of the B2C market. Business competition is fierce not only in metro cities but also in tier-1 and tier-2 towns, which means narrower profit margins for businesses.”
Read the complete interview:
TechGraph: Could you help give a sense of how far SupplyNote has come in its one year of existence? From when it began to where it is now?
Kushang: In 2019, we launched SupplyNote, a Cloud-based web and mobile-enabled suite that connects restaurant outlets, service providers, and suppliers. However, our entrepreneurial journey began in 2015, when I (Kushang), Abhishek Verma, Harshit Mittal, and Nitin Prakash Co-founded AdCount Technologies. We worked on the initial concept of assisting brands in running trackable BTL (offline advertisements) using food packaging items as the medium.
The strategy for the acquisition of clients was Feet-on-Street. The team went door to door, proposing the company’s offerings to expand its client base. Later, we were fortunate to have wonderful clients who referred us to other businesses but destiny had other plans for the team.
Working closely with restaurant outlets enabled us to investigate and address the various needs of these establishments. When we launched SupplyNote in 2019, we already had over 300 clients who were interested in our software and some of them became our first users.
In terms of presence, we are now in 60 cities across three countries. We have already impacted over 1200 outlets in India, and our goal is to impact 100,000+ food businesses globally over the next five years. In terms of GMV, we have seen a 3X increase since the beginning of this fiscal year and a 12X increase since the beginning of the previous fiscal year.
Furthermore, our customer base has grown by approximately 66%, indicating that the solution is in high demand. To support the growing acceptance of the solution, we had to strengthen the team as well. Our team’s strength has increased by 40% in a year.
TechGraph: How is SupplyNote utilizing its sectoral expertise and technology to solve the unsolved tech gap in the Restaurant industry?
Kushang: Food aggregators now control a sizable portion of the B2C market. Business competition is fierce not only in metro cities but also in tier-1 and tier-2 towns, which means narrower profit margins for businesses.
Also, as COVID-19 looms over our heads, it becomes a matter of survival for smaller businesses as most food and beverage establishments still use pen and paper to track and manage their inventory.
Since there is no digital record of consumption, human errors occur frequently in the food industry. Another difficulty is obtaining inventory at a lower cost. Managing all the requirements offline is a time-consuming task for a restaurant and the current offline model is cumbersome as it costs restaurants between 8% and 10% of their total revenue.
However, there is a lot of room for saving if restaurants automate these manual tasks. SupplyNote’s expertise in the sector offers solutions that digitize the entire inventory management and procurement process.
The technological assistance enables food and beverage businesses to optimize their processes and save time and money, resulting in higher profits. Users have reported that their operating costs have been reduced by more than 9%, resulting in a 70% increase in profit margins.
TechGraph: How is SupplyNote, facilitating the entire inventory and supply chain management process for restaurants digitally?
Kushang: The restaurant industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak and in this scenario, SupplyNote as a solution is more relevant than ever.
SupplyNote is India’s most comprehensive SaaS+ E-Commerce platform, assisting food businesses in scaling by digitizing their data, optimizing and automating their backend operations, and ultimately saving costs and increasing profits.
It offers three distinct service segments:
- Cloud-based inventory, procurement, and production management software. Assists restaurants in monitoring inventory based on the average demand of the outlet. As a result, waste is avoided, and operational costs are reduced.
- Warehouse and logistics solution deals with all of the company’s logistics needs. The company does not have to look for a separate partner, which saves time and money.
- E-commerce (food packaging, housekeeping, groceries, etc). Day-to-day requirements of the food businesses such as procuring material, and groceries and connecting with the right suppliers can be handled easily through this one platform.
TechGraph: How is the response so far to your procurement management suite?
Kushang: Our technology-enabled solution has received an overwhelming response from the food industry. We have seen a 150 percent increase year on year.
We constantly demand feedback from our clients to ensure that our solutions and offerings are on track. In FY 2022-2023, we plan on achieving a growth of 200 Million Dollars (By GMV), which is enabled and facilitated by the growth of our platform.
TechGraph: What are the new trends in supply chain management in F&B?
Kushang: Digitization and big data have driven the entire supply chain across industry verticals in recent years. The food and beverage industry was no exception.
As the food and beverage industry around the world embraced data analytics, there was a noticeable shift away from traditional forecasting and inventory management, allowing them to overcome breakdown, reduce costs, and save time.
The trend keeps changing in F&B and supply chains are entrusted with meeting their customers’ rising requirements. Whether it’s bringing products to market faster, changing business strategies to include e-commerce fulfillment capabilities, implementing new technology, or lowering risk, the end goal is always to keep customers satisfied.
TechGraph: How is technology transforming the Restaurants & F&B industry? Do you think the trend had taken hold even before the pandemic-induced disruptions?
Kushang: Well, the technology existed before Covid-19 as well but the majority of players in the restaurants & F&B industry were reluctant and skeptical about the adoption.
However, the restrictions imposed to curb the virus forced many restaurants to stop operating. Post-pandemic the need and requirement to shift from the traditional model has been increasingly growing as food businesses are seeking to invest in automated technologies to avoid any further disruption. The outlets are focusing to cater more and more clients through online delivery systems to avoid any human error.
The trend has taken a stronger hold than ever before as restaurants have found a novel way to ride out the storm and even work more efficiently than ever before with SaaS-based technology to build a strong supply chain management and improve efficiency.
TechGraph: SupplyNote has been collaborating with different industry experts and technology partners to enhance the restaurants’ experience. Going forward, do you see more such engagements?
Kushang: We have an exclusive strategic partnership with Posify and with our association, We offer a premium point of sale solution at no cost for small businesses that generate less than 500 invoices in a month. To improve our efficiency we have also begun to start exploring more associations to provide a wider portfolio of services to users.
TechGraph: What is the roadmap for SupplyNote going forward?
Kushang: In terms of targets, we intend to reach USD 100 million in transaction volume over the next 24 months. For the next 18 months, we will concentrate on strengthening our channels to engage with more customers. We will also emphasize expanding our seller base so that the platform can grow holistically.
In addition, we are also working to establish SupplyNote as a brand to build trust among the F&B industry and educate them on the importance and benefits of technology in their backend operations.
We also aspire to add new features to the platform to provide a more seamless experience for our customers. For instance, we are developing micro-apps for the F&B industry that will assist them with all of their small-to-large digital needs, such as building a website and getting it up and running in seconds, designing a QR-Code scanned menu that can be used at restaurants for ordering.
We may not charge for these services since the goal is to provide the F&B sector with the tools they need to grow and thrive, while we grow alongside them.