Startup Circle: How is SupplyNote helping food businesses to scale?

We stayed home for most of 2020 to minimise the risk of Covid-19. In that time, many technology startups have helped business and individuals to survive. Foodtech was the most talked about in the current situation. When coupled with e-commerce, the idea of a personal, systematic and institutional food-tech startup can bring a change to the traditional industry. SupplyNote has a unique model. With a vision to create automation for procurement in F&B industry, Supplynote offers end-to-end supply chain management solutions to restaurants, enabling them to understand purchasing trends, plan production, anticipate stock outs dates, set low-stock alerts and auto-create purchase orders.

In conversation with CiOL, Kushang- Co-founder & CEO, SupplyNote, talks about funding, expansion plans, business and more.

What is SupplyNote about? Tell us about the team.

Incepted in 2019, SupplyNote is India’s most comprehensive SaaS+ e-commerce platform helping food businesses to scale. It is the first of its kind Point-of-Purchase solution that helps F&B businesses digitize their data, optimize and automate their backend operations that eventually leads to saving costs and boosting profits.

SupplyNote provides a Cloud-based web and mobile-enabled suite connecting restaurant outlets, service providers and suppliers. It offers three distinct segments of services. First, Cloud-based software for managing inventory, procurement and production. This solution helps restaurant monitor the inventory as per the average requirement of the outlet. Thus, avoiding any sort of wastage and reducing the cost of operations. Secondly, the warehouse and logistics solution addresses all sorts of logistics requirements for the business. The business doesn’t have to look out for a separate partner, thus avoiding any hassles. And lastly, e-commerce (food packaging, housekeeping, groceries etc) section helps restaurants manage their day to day requirements of the food businesses like procuring material, groceries and connecting with the right suppliers through this one platform.

How did you come up with the idea?

The founders- myself, Abhishek Verma-COO, Nitin Prakash-CPO and Harshit Mittal-CTO founded SupplyNote with an initial idea of helping brands run trackable BTL (offline advertisements) using food packaging items as the medium. However, working closely with restaurant outlets helped us discover the bigger challenges that these businesses face today. The team shifted towards delivering food packaging material to these restaurants using its own B2B e-commerce platform. Gradually, we realized that the problem lies in the process of procurement, more than the discovery. As a fixation to the same, we launched the SAAS platform- SupplyNote which digitized the entire procurement process and automated steps like inventory management, digital ordering, payment ledger management and supplier/product discovery.

How well equipped are you to combat the COVID-19 challenges?

SupplyNote is a solution that is more relevant now than ever. As we all know, the restaurant industry has suffered the most due to COVID 19 outbreak. They need solutions that can accelerate their recovery. SupplyNote enabled one to optimise the operations and inventory within the restaurant. Also, it helped procure material for the best cost. All in all, the solution helped one save a huge amount. For any business to make profits, one needs to operate precisely. And SupplyNote is a platform that will in return help the F&B industry combat the challenges caused due to pandemic.

What is your business/market growth?

We have witnessed a 150% YoY growth. The overwhelming response received from the clients has only motivated us to keep refining our technology.

The pandemic has affected every sector. How are you coping?

Our product is such that it has gained importance and demand during these times. And as the things return to normalcy, the demand will only surge. The reason is that these are the times when the restaurant industry will transform to avoid such a hit in future. And SupplyNote will play a major role in the process.

What are your Post-Covid plans?

Currently, we are focussed on improving the technology to the best. Also, we are working towards onboarding more vendors on our platform. The idea is to strengthen the offering from all the sides.

Funding

The brand has raised a total of $1.6 M till date (seed of $115 K, bridge of $335 k and $550k pre-series A, bridge 600k USD).