F&B marketing platform Mobikon secures $7 Mn from Sistema Asia Fund, others

Marketing and customer engagement platform for restaurants Mobikon has raised about $7 million (Rs 45 crore ) from Sistema Asia Fund, Qualgro and C31Ventures. Importantly, this is the the third round of financing for Mobikon.

Founded by Samir Khadepaun and Salil Khamkar, Mobikon offers a single CRM dashboard to restaurants for engaging with customers intelligently across tasks of ordering, reservations, feedback, loyalty, and marketing.

At present, Mobikon offers its services to over 3,400 restaurants globally, out of which about 2,000 restaurants hail from India.

Present in six geographies including Singapore, Philippines, Dubai, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, and India, Mobikon will deploy proceeds towards scaling up business in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The company is also planning to go deeper into existing markets and ram-up its leadership team.

In 2015, the company raised $5 million from Jungle ventures, Life. SREDA, Qualgro, Spring Singapore and Lion Rock. Prior to this round, the Singapore-based venture had snapped up $2.7 million during 2012-2013 from Jungle Ventures, Spring Singapore, and Lion Rock.

"We will be using the money to hire senior management as we grow rapidly. We expect to take the employee strength from 120 to 180-200 by the end of the year across all markets," Samir Khadepaun, founder of Mobikon, told ET.

In June last year, F&B marketing platform had acquired MassBlurb, an automated online platform for restaurants. Earlier, Mobikon had acquired analytics startup Trii.be for an undisclosed amount in August 2015.

According to research firm, Gartner - CRM has edged past ERP as the top application software investment priority. By the end of 2017, CRM spends will be $36.5 billion, when compared to $34.5-billion spends on ERP.

This year, CRM is narrowing the gap on ERP; spends on ERP were $31.8 billion while it was $31.7 billion for CRM. This further validates a business focus on enhancing customer experience, with both mature and emerging regions emphasising investments in CRM.