Happitoo is a location-based nightlife app that enables users to explore, discover and socialize over food, drinks, dance, music, theme nights, buffets and real-time offers at restaurants, pubs, clubs and lounges all in a single swipe. It is one of its kind nightout planning and recommendation app, recently launched on Android, that curates the best of nightlife experiences and real-time deals in your part of town.
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The Indian Food Service Industry
The Indian Food Service Sector is $48 billion, and is expected to touch $70 billion in 2018 (Currently, around 3% of GDP). Moreover, with availability of high disposable income with people in metros, tier-1 and tier-2 cities, they are more willing to go out to eat and spend some quality time. The frequency of visits to restaurants/pubs etc. has increased a lot and thus has increased the blended average. Also, Wine consumption in India, especially among women, has increased a lot.
With more and more population acquiescent to hang out, demand for affordable yet high-end eatery has gone high. Today’s population is very selective with the place they wish to spend time at; they want it to be best experience with right kind of people.
Hemant Jain has been into the mobile internet industry for last 20 years. During his episode with mobile internet industry, he has realized that there is always a gap between what people seek and what a platform offers to fulfill their needs. “There is huge demand for quality eatery and even though a plenty of places has come up in last few years, there is a missing link which could provide everyone with information about services & offers at a restaurant without actually visiting that place” Hemant Jain, Co-founder, Happitoo.
Building the ‘Happy Hours’!
Hemant is a business traveler and has been outside India for business purposes. He also happens to be at places where nightlife is very active and observes that India has a long way to go. During one of his business trips, he met with Ravi Raj Meena, co-founder, Happitoo who had developed an app called Happy Hours India, with real-time happy hour listings and buffet offers available. “When I shared this information with my friends, they really liked the idea as everyone is looking for places with happy hours and similar offers” says Hemant.
Hemant and Ravi got together to build on the already existing Happy Hours India app. They became considerate of the thought and interviewed close to 350 people to understand the industry, what their expectations are, and where exactly does the opportunity lies? They deduced that people are very concerned about where they want to go tonight and what they wanted to do, depending on the companion. They also noticed that the restaurants and the nightclubs had much more to offer and the patrons had much more to look forward to. 
Based on their observations and product development, Hemant and Ravi co-founded Happitoo- a location-based nightlife app that enables users to explore, discover and socialize over food, drinks, dance, music, theme nights, buffets and real-time offers at restaurants, pubs, clubs and lounges all in a single swipe. It is one of its kind nightout planning and recommendation app, recently launched on Android, that curates the best of nightlife experiences and real-time deals in your part of town.
Special Features:
- If you are going out with friends and you are looking for happy hours, App provides a card/tab ‘happy hour’ which tells you about the places which are currently running happy hours and time left before it gets over.
- App also has a feature called ‘make my night’ which suggests you places according to your requirements. As per the consumer’s preferences and choices, it recommends places in and around him. Essentially, it’s a hyperlocal app.
Hemant says that the product is built from voice of the customer. App also provides information about late night places and meals. The whole idea is to make the process of discovering perfect hangout place for night very simple. The vision is to be one stop destination for people looking forward to have a seamless night experience and continue to delight consumers.
Happitoo has been developed after keeping all the aspects in row. Provided, app will be mostly used in night, it has extra-added features for Readability and utilizes extremely vibrant colors. The app is very versatile and can be launched at any place without need of any modification in the structure.
[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]Key features of Happitoo are:
- India’s 1st ever real-time Happy Hour deals and Special offers countdown
- India’s 1st Nightout planning & recommendation tool, MAKE MY NIGHT, which helps plan epic nights in 6 easy steps.
- Largest network covering 8000+ nightspots| 700+ locations| 15 cities
- A very unique Hyperlocal Nightout experience platform, connecting the restaurants and consumers in real-time
- Innovation in Design and User Experience
- Single tap, hassle free discovery of amazing Nightout experiences
- Largest collection of Happy Hours, Special Offers, Theme Nights, Quarter Joints and Buffets
- Integration with Uber[/box]
Growth
Launched on 21st Aug’ 15 on Android, Happitoo garnered over 23,000 installs within the few days of its launch. Happitoo is currently present in 15 cities in India, which include Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Jaipur, Ludhiana, Faridabad, Chandigarh, Indore and Chennai. App has close to 80 unique theme nights in 15 cities across 8200 restaurants, clubs and pubs. Current team size of Happitoo is 12 (four team members are dedicated to technology and rest are on operations, marketing and sales).
“We are excited with our progress. We are receiving very positive response from market. We are going in a very systematic manner, whether it is in terms of how we are reaching to customer, or building relationship” says Hemant.
Happitoo will soon expand to Goa, Lucknow and Bhopal. Hemant comments that these places host a lot of young population and tendency of youth to enjoy night life has grown. Within a year, Happitoo plans to go international by launching its services in at least one of the countries.
Moreover, Happitoo is focusing on building awareness about the app. They have identified consumption and engagement points. Happitoo plans to mark its presence at such places to build awareness and create relevant user experience. “We are not rushing to get maximum number of downloads. Rather, we are focused on fetching quality customer and engage them to our platform. You see, in this way, ultimately these customers will act as point of sales for us when they will recommend Happitoo to others which will boost downloads anyways.”
Happitoo is geared up to create awareness about brand. The company already has plans in pipeline to engage end consumers to the app. The company is also adopting influence marketing strategy to obtain exposure. Happitoo hosts its own blog where it gets celebrities to publish relevant content over the blog.
Challenges & Learning
“Unavailability of capital for scaling up is a major challenge we are confronted to now. We are tackling the challenge by adopting a systematic approach to growth and grow gradually. We are focusing on point of consumption and enhancing the user experience rather than growing aggressively” says Hemant.
Talking of learning, Hemant says that the journey so far has been very exciting. Over the period of time, Team Happitoo has learnt that:
- You have to be completely focused on product building if you want to create a sustainable long-term product. You should always keep your consumer in mind at all stages of product development.
- A well-defined approach and clarity of thoughts is very essential to achieve target.
- You should be cautious with allocation of available capital. You should always optimize the fund utilization to achieve the outcome.
In The Future
“We are at early stage of our development process and are determined to scale our operations. We are not bothered about our competitors. That would result in dilution of our though process or drift us away from our focus” says Hemant.
Hemant and Ravi bootstrapped Happitoo. In June 2015, Happitoo raised 50 lakh INR. Currently, they are looking forward to raise funds worth around half a million dollar to a million dollar. The company will allocate the funding to its growth.
Moreover, Happitoo is also planning to launch few other special features in the app which would definitely enhance nightlife experience of its consumer base. Building on that if you go to a restaurant, they essentially don’t come to you and tell the offers available with credit/debit cards of different banks. Eventually, you end up paying the whole amount. Also, there is no platform where you can look for currently available offers on your bank cards. Happitoo is going to integrate this feature in app which would notify you about all the saving offers which you can avail. Moreover, due to international players in the Indian dining segment, newer dining formats with emphasis on ambience are being developed. Music has become an integral aspect to this ambience. Happitoo soon will be launching the feature in its app which would tell you about which music is being played at which restaurant at which day. The company is also looking forward to do some long term relationship projects with other service providers including Uber and wallet companies.
DOWNLOAD HAPPITOO NOW!
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