Prateek Dayal

This is more of a … look at the pictures .. they tell the story … post :)

We went to the much awaited (or rather publicized) startup city today. We reached around noon and found a lot of crowd there. The event looked like a trade fair and there were banners and balloons all over the place.

The event was in Nimhans convention centre and the good thing was that there was tons of parking space available. Once inside, we found the place to be really crowded, which I guess was good for the companies showcasing there.

Open Coffee Club also had a booth there and I found Vaibhav and Amarinder evangelizing OCC. I think these guys are doing an awesome job of spreading the OCC and keeping the meets interesting.

Several OCC companies were also demoing their products/services there. For example LifeBlob

We also met Sameer and Nandhini of Madhouse (now SeventyMM) and had a good discussion with them on Indian startup scene. These guys have great experience building and selling a company and it was fun talking to them.

We did not attend any talks or discussions and spent most of the time catching up with other people. Overall I got more of a trade fair feeling out of Startup City. There were stalls of Amazon, Nokia and HSBC right at the entrance :) The event certainly did not feel like a real startup event. I am not sure how to describe that feel .. I guess it wasn’t boostrapper’s event (except for the OCC booth).

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There were days when internet companies used to launch and not enter private alphas, public betas and other such states. Then came the concept of release early release often in the web and sites would not wait forever but release a beta and let the most enthusiastic users in. These users would brave broken functionality and help the developers test their product with some live audience. Then came gmail and orkut with their (fake) betas and redefined the meaning of the word. Suddenly it was uncool to not be beta untill you have a few million users. Kaati zone is suddenly bringing in all the web 2.0 coolness to their food joints. Erasmic ventures has invested in the company and there seems to be a lot of buzz around it mostly for the fact that Kiran Nadkarni, the founder and director has been a VC.

Impressed by all this I tried out the new Kaati Zone in Banashankari last night. We entered the joint full of smoke (not out of fire but cooking smoke). We enquired and found out that they had not (yet) installed exhaust fans. The place was extremely noisy as they had not installed any sound absorption either. The menu looked nice and we finally ordered and the long wait started. After about 30 mins .. two of the three things ordered were done. Surprisingly the parathe Nithya had ordered arrived cold. They certainly did not look like they were cooked in the last 15 minutes or so. Other stuff was average too. When everybody was done, my roll arrived and as I had expected it was quite average. Some tables had chutney and others were offered package sauce. The decor however was cool because they had put some collage with pics from Bangalore street.

I frankly have no motivation to go back to that place when they have completed it because I felt the basic reason for going there (food) is not worth it in itself. On top of that I don’t like the concept of a beta joint. May be when some other people do it and it become a cult, I will follow and appreciate how cool it is. My only suggestion to Kaati Zone would be to make sure they serve awesome food. I have had much better rolls in smaller joints that are considered quite uncool. Growth plans are cool but a chain is no good if you cannot keep up the quality.

Have you ever had a beta experience in any other offline product ?

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HungryBangalore.com lets you order food online in Bangalore. The website is part of the hungryzone group but online ordering is currenly available only in Bangalore. You can however find reviews and contact details of restaurents in many other cities like Bhopal, Delhi, Goa etc. I live in Bangalore and I tried the service finally yesterday and was quite impressed with the number of restaurants they have (even in not so restaurant-ish localities in bangalore like mine).

Ordering process begins by choosing your locality from the list on the main page and then you can select cuisine and/or restaurant. You can see the average cost of the meal per person and decide if its in the budget that you are looking for. I liked the fact that the menu can be looked up both in vegetarian and non veg categories as well as by food type (Soup, Starters, Rice etc). Thats how its arranged in a typical menu at restaurant but its just much easier to lookup here as once you get used to their layout, every restaurant’s menu has the same layout. :)

I live in Banashankari and ordered from Bawarchi. My food arrived pretty quickly. I think in less than 30 mins. I got an email after ordering and one more after my order was placed at the restaurant. I got a call from the restaurant before delivery to get the exact location.

All in all I found the service quite compelling and very useful. Some benefits I felt are

• You don’t need to hunt around the house for menu
• No wasting money on calls while the menu is read out to you when you finally can’t find it :)
• I think there is some kind of user loyalty program in form of points collected on every order
• I did not try it but if you want to speak and order, you can do that too. No need to order online
• You pay when you get your food, so no credit card transaction required.
• The service is free. Nothing extra is added to your bill

I think the usability of the final ordering process can be improved a bit but that should not stop you from using the website. If you are enthusiastic, you can also review the restaurant you just ordered from.

I generally don’t review too many websites. The last I reviewed was flipkart because thats another service I found to be very compelling. I hope you will give hungrybangalore a try and let me know your experience with it.

Popularity: 9% [?]