Foodiebay - Press Center
About Foodiebay
Foodiebay is an online food guide, restaurant directory and menu-pages website for anyone who is looking to either dine out or order food. Currently operational in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata and Pune (recent addition), Foodiebay lists menus, ratings and contact details for all restaurants listed and reviews (both editor and user) & discounts for a large percentage of these. Latest addition to Foodiebay has been the launch of Pune section of the website with ~400 menus and focus on user reviews for restaurants which showcases the collective opinion of a large number of foodies rather than that of a single person (the editor).Foodiebay was started in July 2008 by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, both alumnus of IIT Delhi and Bain, as a part time hobby with only 500 restaurant listings in Delhi NCR. The intention was to provide the people of Delhi NCR with as much information as possible about the food that they were about to order. So the site started with complete menus and contact information for the most popular take-out/delivery places in town. As the website got popular, the team added more content and now have 2200 restaurants in Delhi NCR listed on the website ranging from the swankiest restaurant to the desiest dhabas in town.
The website is now the largest food portal in the Delhi NCR region and possibly in India too. It helps more than 100,000 hungry souls every month make an informed eating-out or ordering-in decision with over 5,000 restaurants to chose from across Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata.
Initially, Foodiebay was mainly used by corporates and executives who have internet access all round the clock. But Foodiebay quickly got popular with the younger generation, and now people from all age-groups have started using it. The biggest marketing vehicle for Foodiebay is 'word-of-mouth' — not a single penny has been spent on marketing to reach the current stage.
Foodiebay.com also acts as a very effective marketing engine for restaurants. It has helped many restaurants market their brand through promotions and advertisements on the website. A few brands that have been associated with Foodiebay include Vatika Hospitality, Republic of Chicken (Alchemist), Bennigans, Orange Hara, Moets Group, Cinnabon (Dish hospitality) and many more.
The winning value proposition for marketing at Foodiebay is that restaurants can only choose to market themselves to customers looking for restaurants in their catchment area. This ad targeting goes down to the level of individual sub-zones in the city (e.g. Vasant Vihar in Delhi or Andheri West in Mumbai)
Over the years, Foodiebay has won applause in every city it has gone to. From being profiled on CNBC Young Turks in December 2009 to being called "one of the top 25 hottest startups in India" by Appappeal, Foodiebay has come a long way from being just a hobby and now has a team of 10 full time Foodies.
For any further information or for pictures or high-res logos, please contact Pankaj Chaddah at pankaj@foodiebay.com or +91 9873 934 957
The Founders
Deepinder Goyal is a 2005 Mathematics and Computing graduate from IIT Delhi. His love for food dates back to his IIT days when in order to avoid the hostel food, he and his friends used to eat out almost everyday. After graduation, Deepinder experimented with a food website called Foodlet.com which was the first food portal of its kind in India. Realising that India was not yet ready, he left Foodlet and joined one of the largest management consulting firms in the world, Bain and Company. Foodiebay was conceived when he was working at Bain. What inspired Foodiebay was a huge stack of menus in the pantry of Bain that people used to look up to order food from nearby restaurants. Deepinder, being an internet junkie, just asked himself - 'What if all this was available online?'
Pankaj Chaddah is a Mechanical Engineer from IIT Delhi. He graduated in 2007 and joined Bain and Company right out of the campus. He met Deepinder at Bain and both of them worked together on quite a few projects before thinking up of Foodiebay. Pankaj who has always been very fond of marketing, really liked the idea and took it upon himself to get Foodiebay maximum attention in the national capital. Pankaj, now the Chief Operating Officer of Foodiebay primarily focuses on Sales and Marketing for Foodiebay. He loves playing tennis and football and is also a big Man U fan.
Previous Press Coverage
Foodiebay in CNBC Young TurksFoodiebay in Jet Airways' In-Flight Magazine
Foodiebay in The Hindu
Foodiebay in Femina
Foodiebay in Indian Express
Foodiebay in Mumbai Mirror
Foodiebay in DNA Mumbai
Foodiebay in DNA Pune
Foodiebay in Indian Express Kolkata
Foodiebay in Hindustan Times
Foodiebay in HT City Delhi
Foodiebay in India Today
Foodiebay has also been seen on NDTV, News X, India News, Metronation, Alootechie, ContentSutra and Afaqs
