SmartQ Acquires Goodbox Cafeteria Business

Jul 21, 2018

SmartQ Acquires Goodbox Cafeteria Business

SmartQ, a Bengaluru-based food tech startup has acquired Goodbox’s cafeteria business which is backed by Nexus Venture Partners for an undisclosed amount. SmartQ recently raised around $1Mn in funding from Dubai based investors and its existing investor YourNest. The deal is expected to be in an all-cash worth around $800K (INR 5.5 Cr).

This acquisition will help SmartQ to widen its customer base while Goodbox can now focus on its hyperlocal business. Abey Zachariah, CEO of Goodbox was excited to announce the selling of its cafeteria solutions business believing it to be non-core activity at present.

About Goodbox:

Goodbox was founded in 2015 as a platform that provides businesses with a Mini App and customers with a Mega App to discover thousands of Mini Apps. These apps can be created by businesses at less than 1% of the cost of making their own app and within a short period of time. These are ready made apps that have full feature such as messaging, catalog, online payments, booking engines, reward points etc.
Customers need not download them as mini apps. They can download the Goodbox Mega App and access hundreds of businesses with just one click at one place. Goodbox does not charge commission from the businesses and has very affordable yearly pricing plans that are suitable for businesses of all sizes.

About SmartQ:

SmartQ provides a digital cafeteria experience across different sectors including corporates, malls, multiplexes, stadiums, hospitals and colleges. It was founded by Krishna Wage and Abhishek Ashok in 2014. The digital cafeteria platform has mobile applications, automated billing kiosks, centralised billing system, NFC prepaid cards, POS software etc. The company claims to have grown 50% month-on-month and clocked over 100K transactions every day, as of March 2018. This is due to the unique and useful nature of its platform.

USP of SmartQ -
SmartQ can transform any conventional cafeteria into a completely digital and cashless platform. This improves cafeteria and food-court experience as it eliminating queues, reduces wait time, and increasing collaborative work time. In the food tech startup culture, digital cafeterias seem to be the new trend.

Competiton faced by SmartQ in FoodTech Industry:

HungerBox is similar to SmartQ which recently raised $2.5 Mn in Series A funding. The company currently serves more than 110 digital cafeterias. It also a wide variety of payment methods on its platforms.

Another competitor of SmartQ is Zeta, which has introduced a variety of digital ordering and payment facilities that to transform the conventional cafeterias in the corporate organisations into a digital cafeteria.