Binny Bansal leads Series C funding round in restaurant analytics startup Mobikon

By Debjyoti Roy

  • 25 Oct 2019
Binny Bansal | Credit: Reuters

Restaurant marketing and analytics platform Mobikon has raised $12.5 million (Rs 88 crore) in its Series C round led by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal.

The company will use the funds for expansion and also foray into new markets, Mobikon said in a statement.

Samir Khadepaun, founder at Mobikon, said the firm will expand its market share in existing geographies and establish a strong foothold in Australia and Indonesia. “We will also invest heavily in our tech stack including data science team and integration frame work,” he said.

Launched in 2012, Mobikon is a customer engagement and marketing platform for the food and beverages industry offering customer engagement, marketing, analytics and business tools in a single platform. It currently operates in 5 countries with over 6,000 restaurants in their platform.

Its proprietary platform mEngage helps restaurants with a single view of customers across ordering, reservations, feedback, payments, social media, website and marketing channels.

Bansal said Mobikon’s proposed geographical expansion into Australia and South East Asia will give them unbeatable market leadership in the restaurant-tech segment.

In 2017, it raised $7 million (around Rs 44.7 crore then) in its Series B funding round from Sistema Asia Fund, C31 Ventures and Qualgro.

It raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding in 2012 and Series A funding of $5 million from Jungle Ventures, Life.Sreda, Qualgro, Spring Singapore and Lion Rock, in 2015.

Mobikon also made two acquisitions in the past. In 2015, it acquired Singapore-based Trii.be, which owns a customer feedback management tool. While in 2016, it bought Mumbai-based social and marketing solutions provider MassBlurb.

In the same year, the company also made a strategic investment in Hipcask which is an online pre-buying and gifting platform for alcohol and coffee.

Bansal had resigned as group chief executive officer at the homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart following allegations of personal misconduct in late 2018.

Since then, he has turned into one of the most active angel investors in India. This year, he invested in supply-chain tech startup Increff, digital insurance startup Acko, SaaS startup TerraView and ace designer Masaba Gupta's fashion label.