Online restaurant reservation service TableGrabber has expanded its operations to Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro in Brazil and Santiago in Chile. The Brazil expansion was first reported by TechCircle.
Speaking to Medianama, TableGrabber CEO Pawan Marwaha said that they currently offer English versions of the site in these regions, but they have developed Portuguese and Spanish versions and plan to roll it out next week. They have also recruited local staff in these regions and are currently in talks with restaurants for tie-ups. Marwaha however declined to disclose the number of restaurant partners in Brazil and Chile.
Launched in April 2012, Tablegrabber is an online restaurant reservation service which claims to offer real time reservations along with dynamic pricing depending upon the dining time. The company focuses on premium hotel, fine dining restaurants and bars and claims to offer online reservations for more than 450 restaurants across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Some of the restaurants include Taj Group, the ITC group, Oberoi, Lalit Ashok, The Biere Club, Park Hotel, and Blue Frog among others.
The company currently offers the service on the web, but it plans to launch mobile apps across all platforms in the future. It also seems to offer event bookings and restaurant deals in Delhi and Mumbai and the company plans to expand to other Indian cities in the future.
While Marwaha declined to share the number of reservations clocked by TableGrabber until now, he informed that they are growing at a healthy rate. He also noted that online restaurant reservations is still a nascent market in India, since Indians are not used to making online reservations yet.
For restaurants, it offers an Electronic Reservation Diary (ERD) solution allowing them to receive bookings through the website, phone or walk-ins and sync it with the TableGrabber website, thereby keeping the restaurant’s availability information updated in real time. It also provides restaurateurs with necessary tools to build their guest database, keep track of their preferences and create business intelligence reports to improve the overall guest dining experience.
Business Model: TableGrabber currently works on a SAAS (Software as a service) model, where the company charges restaurants for the ERD solution and also takes fees on every booking they do. Marwaha said that restaurants are slowly waking up to the idea of online restaurant bookings, although it is still a long sales cycle in the country.
The company is a bootstrapped venture and was part of the recently graduated second batch of Microsoft’s accelerator program. It is also a part of Startup Chile’s forthcoming seventh generation of startups.
Other Players: Bookurtable allows users to make restaurant reservations and order food in 42 Indian cities including Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune among others. Last year, it had partnered with JustDial, allowing users who search for restaurant listings on the site to make reservations. Interestingly, JustDial which recently completed its IPO, is also apparently launching an online food delivery service.
Besides this, there is Dineout.co.in which had raised an angel round of funding from the founders of Travel Boutique online in October 2012, Tablewalla which offers online restaurant reservation in Delhi and Mumbai, GourmetItUp which offers fine dining experiences in Mumbai and Bangalore-based Poshvine which allows users to book tables at premium and niche restaurants and had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from MyFirstCheque in June 2012.
There are also players like JustEat.in, FoodPanda India, and TastyKhana.in, however they are focused on online food delivery rather than online restaurant reservations.
