Restaurant CRM software startup MassBlurb raises angel funding from Vikram Chachra and Mumbai Angels
The Mumbai-based social media marketing startup for restaurants, MassBlurb, today announced that it has raised an angel round for an undisclosed amount, led by Vikram Chachra, and a few other independent investors from the Mumbai Angels network.
The startup plans to use this round of funding to enhance product development and expand across India. They also plan to expand internally, adding a couple of markets there, over the next six months.
Founded by Pankit Chheda and Sanket Shah in November 2014, the company helps small and medium business create an online presence and target audience through social media marketing. They also offer CRM solutions for restaurant clients to engage with their customers.
The idea was born when both of them tried to help their parents set up websites for their businesses.
“We noticed the difficulty they experienced while trying to create a website. We also realized that most small and medium scale enterprises were missing out on capitalizing within the digital space that exists now, so we decided to help them,” said Pankit.
Initially, they focused on helping companies in any sector create an online presence, but later, the duo decided that building a specific product for one vertical would be more beneficial than building a generic product for all verticals. The plan is to expand into other verticals in the future.
MassBlurb works as a single dashboard where restaurants can manage their end to end online presence and make sure they are present on listing platforms like Zomato, FoodPanda, and the like.
The company has signed up over 100 restaurants in Mumbai, and has recently expanded into three other cities -- Delhi, Bengaluru, and Pune. This round of funding led by Vikram Chachra, Founding Partner, Eight Innovate Capital, through the funding platform LetsVenture, and independent investors from the Mumbai Angels network comes when the startup plans to add more features to its product offerings and expand across the country and abroad.
This is Vikram’s second investment in the food tech sector in one month, (previous investment story here), proving that the VC interest in this $50 billion market is here to stay.
In the offline world, one happy customer will tell three others about his experience and an unhappy one will complain to eight-10 other customers. On the internet, these numbers get amplified by thousand times, and can make or break a small business like a restaurant. So how does a small restaurant owner manage his business reputation and presence on a real-time basis across channels like Facebook, Zomato, Tripadvisor, and Twitter, etc? With MassBlurb, Sanket and Pankit are providing these answers,” said Vikram.
Though there are a few startups like Yodle, Yext, and 1001Menus, which are doing similar things globally, MassBlurb is the only one in this space in India.
