EasyDiner enters Bengaluru offering instant bookings in 180 restaurants

Online instant restaurant reservation platform EasyDiner, which launched its service in Delhi/NCR in January followed by Mumbai in August, enters the Bengaluru market, enabling instant bookings in 180 restaurants, to begin with.

Curated by the country’s leading food critic Vir Sanghvi, EasyDiner helps users read crisp reviews and recommendations by top critics in each city, find great restaurants, cafes and bars, and make instant reservations online or through the app within a few minutes. Every reservation made comes with a deal/discount for the diner, ranging from a glass of wine for every diner, a free dessert, or a 50 per cent discount. A 24x7, expert concierge service run by an ex-chef allows users to call a trained dining concierge team to provide recommendations and assist with bookings at heavily booked restaurants.

“We have enabled reservations for 45,000 diners to date, at 1,000 restaurants in Delhi/NCR and Mumbai. With EasyDiner, users can make instant reservations in some of the most popular restaurants like The Bombay Canteen in Lower Parel and Farzi Café in Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, which are booked one week in advance, because we have allocations of two tables that can seat 6-8 diners, with all the restaurants that we have partnered with,” Vir Sanghvi, co-founder and head of content, EasyDiner told BusinessLine .

“We offer diners a range of standalone restaurants, cafes, bars, to restaurants in five-star hotels, and even have the menus of five-star restaurants that are not available on any other platform. Our 200-word curated review along with insider tips such as what to order outside of the menu, the best table, must-have specialities, and so on, are our differentiators,” added Sanghvi.

EasyDiner competes with Gurgaon-headquartered Dineout, which has 1,100 partner restaurants in eight cities and does not consider Zomato as competition, as online reservations constitutes a very miniscule percentage of Zomato’s business.

Everyday, five new partner restaurants are on-boarded and plans are on to launch EasyDiner in Chennai within two months, followed by Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata. “We see great demand for our service in Dubai and plan to enter that market as well,” said Sanghvi.

EasyDiner charges its partner restaurants a flat fee per diner regardless of the diner’s transaction amount, a monetisation model that is already popular with OpenTable (global footprint) and Chope (Singapore, Hong Kong & China).

“Both OpenTable and Chope charge a flat fee of $2 per diner and we are following the same model,” said Deepak Shahdadpuri, MD of DSG Partners Asia, an investor in EasyDiner.

Ash Lilani, Managing Partner, Saama Capital, which has also invested in EasyDiner, pointed out that partner restaurants are accruing 10-20 per cent higher average ticket price per diner with EasyDiner.

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