App clicks with restaurant operators
LIVING Mobile Co Ltd, a Thai startup behind an application that helps restaurateurs manage their operations and the supply chain, is poised to deepen its international expansion after achieving more than B10 million in annual revenue.
In the company’s sights for next year are markets in Europe, the US, Japan and within the Asean region.
“Our founder, Thagoon Chartsutipol, now 32, started on the research and development for the application five years ago by initially focusing on a product for food and restaurant reviews. The application drew more than 5,000 followers in the first year,” Pran Sunonthanam, marketing manager of Living Mobile, said in an interview with The Nation recently.
“This success inspired Thagoon to transform his review application into one that can be used for the management of restaurants and the supply chains.
“This help restaurant owners to improve their ability to manage their raw material costs and also the service they offer, in order to better match the demands of customers.”
He said the application, as a result of the research and development, draws on the data of the customers who visit its review application. The data shows what customers want when they visit a restaurant and also their concerns.
Such information gave Thagoon and his team - including Pran, who joined the operation at the start – plenty to work with under their goal of further developing the application.
The company spent an investment budget of Bt3 million for the first three years of the business.
In 2015, it launched its application, foodstory, in the market. As part of the launch promotions, the company offered the app for free to restaurants nationwide, so that the owners could try out the benefits of the service. The company now has 500 restaurants using the application in Thailand, Singapore and Australia.
The company is negotiating with its strategic partners to expand the reach of its application next year to restaurants in Europe, the US and Japan, as well as additional Asean |markets such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
For this expansion, the company is in discussions with venture capital funds, with funding hoped to be secured in 2018, Pran said.
“When you are a startup business, you have to know who your customers are and how to develop your application to serve their needs. This has been our key success in enabling us to develop the foodstory application for the market,” Pran said.
