Brthe – your online food ordering companion
8 years ago Arpita Soma
TGIF? Planning to order food online? So there is a high possibility that you may sit with your smartphone and check all available apps for offers and discounts at restaurants!
Hold your breath, Brthe (pronounced as ‘breathe’) makes it easier for you. What is even more inspiring is that this amazing extension is being built by 2 students from IIIT.
Brthe simplifies the entire process of visiting multiple coupon sites, creating new accounts, finding coupons or referral codes by automating and bringing it all under one umbrella – a browser extension. All you have to do is get their chrome extension, click on Brthe’s thumbnail beside your address bar, select the restaurant and start using it. Currently, one can use the extension to get the best available discounts from FoodPanda and Dominoz and the team will be adding KFC, JustEat and a couple of other platforms very soon.
For instance, if you are planning to order from FoodPanda, you select FoodPanda from the list of platforms, find restaurants in your area, build your order and proceed to checkout. This is where Brthe comes into play. It checks for the path for you to get this order for the least price and prompts what you need to do on each page. Here, click on the ‘click to apply coupons’ prompt and the best possible discount is offered. Furthermore, it prompts which payment gateway to chose and also what discount code to apply there. This way you will not have to hop from one website/app to another and keep a track of all of them separately.
They had initially started out as an app for android during their college winter break in 2013 when Ravneet, one of the founders, unfortunately missed out on a super saver deal on ice creams. “Last July, I missed out a discount of 50 per cent at an icecream parlour in the city. I could have had it for Rs 75. But I didn’t know about the offer. This happens quite frequently. We are trying to solve this problem. Our extension makes sure you never overpay for your orders by coming in right after you built your order and assisting you right until the final payment. Keep in mind, the offers are personalized too. Our algorithm is such that it will learn your details such as what kind of credit cards you own and gets the deals specific to you. That’s the point, offers will come to you when you need them; you don’t have to find them on the Web.” Says Ravneet. They have been so busy since December 2013 with this product that they haven’t gone back to their home towns for a break.
During the beta version of their product, they have not only attracted the attention of the Telangana government, but also gained global recognition. They won the Hyderabad edition of AngelHack in May 2014 and were invited to demonstrate their product at AngelHack’s Global Demo Day in US in October 2014. The 2 weeks they spent in the valley gave them a real idea about what it takes to work and build on an idea. Vennela, Cofounder at Brthe says, “ It was all about drilling down an idea into a working MVP; deliberating on what is feasible
and what is not. We had multiple verticals in the app, but after our experience in the valley we learnt that we should stick to only one vertical and chose food ordering as our vertical and decided to make it a browser extension.” On questioning further about why they chose to address the food ordering vertical, she quickly says “People who order food online do it at least 3 to 4 times a week versus ordering other stuff.”
The Telangana govt supported them with a seed fund to aid their travel to the valley and the team is now working on adding more platforms and raising a round of funding. These students who have ditched the traditional way of running behind campus placements for jobs to starting up and creating jobs are a great inspiration to several others. India surely needs such innovators!
The Telangana govt supported them with a seed fund to aid their travel to the valley and the team is working on adding more platforms and raising a round of funding. These students who have ditched the traditional way of running behind campus placements for jobs to starting up and creating jobs are a great inspiration to several others. India surely needs such innovators!
