Day of launch

We had decided to launch hungrybangalore when we would have 10 restaurants with us. Fortunately, we reached 15 in no time and we launched hungrybangalore.com. We launched our online food ordering portal on 24th of July 2006.

Mails to our friends was the only way we could spread the word about online food orders through the website at that time. We maied all our friends and thus started the chain of mails. The result: 1500+ hits the first day. We were quite happy with the response on the first day and prematurely foresaw an easy road ahead. We did not expect any orders the first day and didn’t get any either. However, we got plenty of feedbacks, some encouraging, some discouraging and critical. The first day instilled a lot of confidence in us.

We knew the key to our success lay in listening to our users feedbacks. Our users pointed out some usability issues, some problems on hungrybangalore and we started working on them. We have 3 releases in the first week itself. We changed the layout, added some functionalities and changed the contents of a few pages.

Thus went the first week.

How we got our first client

Both of us were kind of scared when we we went to talk to our first client. We had doubts like..would he be able to understand the model, would he be open to the idea of online food orders etc. We had carefully chosen Sharma’s in Koramangla to talk to first. Reasons being – the guy was a north indian(we didn’t know Kannada well), he had a page in koramangala.com (we thought he atleast knew the importance of internet), and last but not the least… we had been to this restaurant n number of times so it was kind of being in the comfort zone. The meeting lasted for about 30 mins and we came out with a big smile on our faces(yes you got it right, we had our first client). Infact, Mr.Sharma was so encouraging, if confidence level was measured in kgs, we had tons of it when we returned:) After that we have met so many restaurant owners… some were tough, some easy, some had lot of questions and doubts…but still the first client remains as special as always to or hungrybangalore team.

Designing of the website

When we decided to start hungrybangalore.com, we had some idea of what technologies to use…we had been working in this field for some time, but we are both on the technical side of developing web based applications. We didn’t know how to design a website, how to make images.. and last but not the least, when working with a team in the office, you never learn making a big picture. Right from configuring a server, making the entire setup, using photoshop to make images, we learnt everything gradually. Things started getting clear when we decided on our requirements. Here again, we used to have lot of discussions(fights would be a precise word but I better be polite in my words:). What information will go in which page, how it should be shown etc etc. Menu page was the most complicated I feel.We have done maximum hit and trials on that page. We hope it has come out well and its user-friendly. Features like showing the description of the items, pagination of the categories, view the cart etc have been added so that our users get maximum information on the menu page. Please pour in your thoughts and suggestions if you feel its complicated..or how you would want it to make the online ordering process easy.

Its been 4 months that we launched hungrybangalore and when we look at what we started and what we have now.. things surely have changed.. We had only 15 restaurants on the day we launched.. and now we have 120.. there are lot more restaurants to be covered. We didn’t have features like party planning, fruit of the week, search options based on delivery areas, based on the average meal for two.. and a lot of other features… its good to see how the online food ordering portal has evolved from being an interface for only home deliveries, to a one stop shop for food in Bangalore.

Its amazing to get the feedbacks from our users who have got benefitted by our service.. We would love to hear more from u and incorporate changes that you suggest.. i know we have been lagging behind in impelementing a few of your suggestions, but those are the ones that got delayed because of some unavoidable circumstances..we promise to get those features to you very soon.
Hope you enjoy our story of how we have built this.

How it all started!!

The other day I was chatting with a batchmate from IIT and he said..I wish I had not been to IIT, our expectations from ourselves are so high, leave alone other’s expectations. That was really thought provoking. I started thinking how it has been for me.Probably very true, had I not been to IIT, it would have been a different story. My friends and family still say..You can earn well with ur education, have a peaceful life and just enjoi. But that doesn’t suit me I guess:) Infact doesn’t suit both of us.. we are 2 batchmates from IIT Kgp who have started this venture..we always wanted to do something of our own..what, when, how were questions that needed to be answered. We landed in Bangalore in 2003 and started working with an MNC. Things were cool but we felt restless. I kept on hopping jobs and he started looking for options other than jobs..MBA, higher studies ?? We did not want to go to US. 2 yrs passed by like this. There were times when we had to go to the office on weekends or stay back late..and ordering food at those times was a resposibility no one wanted to take because of the pain involved.

We decided to grap the opportunity of this untapped domain. We conducted a survey on the idea and soon there was no doubt that such a website would click in Bangalore. From then on, it has been hungrybangalore on our minds… Niraj and Anurag joined us in the journey and soon we were busy building the application and talking to clients..we would want to make it a one stop shop for anything related to food in Bangalore.. we know therez a lot of scope for improvement and we would want ur help in knowing what u want to see on the website.. new features, ur favourite restaurants..suggestions about anything and everything are most welcome.. we would be glad to implement ur suggestions as much as we can. Wish us luck that we do not lose sight of the purpose of hungrybangalore.com.