(L-R) Hungry Hub Co-Founders Surasit Sachdev (CEO), Kamolporn Thedratanawong (Head of Product), and Ravi Sachathep (COO)
In 2014, Surasit Sachdev launched an online restaurant reservation system in Thailand. Hungry Hub, however, failed as there was no real need for such a platform since one could walk into a restaurant and get a table easily in the country.
Curiously enough, one thing struck Sachdev while building the first version of Hungry Hub: the team’s monthly dinner budget exceeded his expectations. As he studied this problem further, Sachdev realised he was onto something big.
“We realised that some of our employees couldn’t afford dining out because of their moderate lifestyle/pay level,” Sachdev tells e27. For restaurants, it meant less traffic. “While there were many online restaurant booking apps, they thrived on heavy discounts, an unsustainable prospect. So in 2017, we decided to give Hungry Hub another chance before quitting it and help restaurants boost their revenues.”
This was the beginning of Hungry Hub 2.0.
Hungry Hub 2.0 is a restaurant and hotel reservation platform for special occasions that also provides fixed-price offers and gourmet delivery services. The app lets diners know how much they will pay and what they will get before walking into the restaurant.
At the same time, it helps restaurants generate sustainable revenues.
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“Given the culture in Asia, there are situations where one person pays on behalf of the entire table during parties, business meetings, dating, and birthday celebrations. But they don’t know what the people at the other end of the table will order. We at Hungry Hub solve this problem for billpayers. Meanwhile, it increases restaurants’ average check-ins and drives more traffic through our over a million monthly active users,” Sachdev explains.
Initial challenges
The first few months of Hungry Hub 2.0 were hard; convincing restaurants about the benefits of partnering with Hungry Hub was an uphill task. Restaurants didn’t want to upset their apple cart.
As Hungry Hub managed to resolve this issue, comes COVID-19. The pandemic and the resulting lockdowns forced it to focus on delivery.
“Although the lockdowns impacted our table reservation business, our food delivery unit and staycations helped us recover 50-60 per cent during those difficult times. As the pandemic threat was gone, we started growing again. We recorded tremendous growth in every quarter in the past three years except for the lockdown periods,” Sachdev claims.
According to him, Hungry Hub grew 2.5x year-over-year before the pandemic, and it is 60-80 per cent y-o-y post-pandemic.
In the past six months alone, the startup’s restaurant base has grown by over 30 per cent. It claims to have seated over two million diners and sourced over US$50 million to its partners.
So far, Hungry Hub has partnered with 1,200 restaurants/hotels across Bangkok, Pattaya, Hua Hin, Koh Samui and Phuket. Its partners include top restaurants, such as Copper Buffet, Audrey Café, The Coffee Club (Minor Group) and global hotels, such as Marriott, Anantara and Banyan Tree.
All across Thailand, there are more than 20,000 restaurants. This means Hungry Hub has only scratched the surface.
“While there are several online platforms in this space, they are either focused on the reservation system or deep discounts, which is very different from what we are doing. We are the leader for special occasion dining in Bangkok,” says the CEO of Hungry Hub, which takes a commission from diners.
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Trends
In the food ordering space, markets in Southeast Asia follow similar trends. However, Thailand has a slight edge as it attracts more tourists than others in the region.
Having said that, fine dining, omakase, and experience-based dining are the current trends in Thailand. “While people used to go out to eat to fill their stomachs in the past, today, it is more about what unique experience they can get from each meal to post on their Instagram and TikTok stories/reels,” Sachdev adds.
In July last year, Hungry Hub secured an undisclosed sum in Series A funding round from investors, including ORZON Ventures. Previously, it received its pre-Series-A stage funding from ECG Venture Capital and MOVF Media Group. In 2019, the startup bagged seed money from Expara and 500 TukTuks (a fund under Thailand’s 500 Global network). .
Hungry Hub is now in the market to raise up to US$5 million to grow its business beyond Thailand.
What is your immediate goal?
“Our immediate goal is to turn profitable within the first half of this year. We are on track to achieve this,” Sachdev concludes.
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