Sharebite bags $39M to expand its corporate food ordering program – Nob6

Sharebite, a startup that companions with eating places to ship meals to company purchasers, at present introduced that it raised $39 million in a Sequence B spherical led by Prosus with participation from Fiserv, Contour Enterprise Companions, Reign Ventures, London Know-how Membership and Not Boring Fund. Co-founder and CEO Dilip Rao tells Nob6 that the proceeds can be put towards increasing Sharebite’s market share, launching new merchandise and creating AI-powered instruments to “improve the meal-ordering expertise.”

Rao and Mohsin Memon, Sharebite’s different co-founder, have been impressed to launch the corporate in 2015 after spending years working at Wall Avenue corporations. Mohsin was an analyst at Financial institution of America, whereas Rao completed a tenure at Goldman Sachs to hitch Credit score Suisse as an funding banker.

“When mixed with subtle expertise, an worker meals profit turns into the nice equalizer, because it applies universally to staff, no matter rank, location, tenure, or geography. The actual fact is, everybody eats,” Rao instructed Nob6 in an e mail interview. “Sharebite’s platform serves because the supply of reality for all issues pertaining to worker meal advantages, and allows HR, IT and accounting groups to centralize all features and allocate prices below one platform, with one single bill to pay.”

Actually, there’s no scarcity of meals ordering startups centered on the enterprise. Whereas the transition to work-from-home through the pandemic made office-dependent ventures a riskier guess, there’s been indicators of a rebound in hubs like New York Metropolis. Fueled by enterprise backers, corporations like Dejbox are designing their very own meals and dealing with different corporations to cook dinner, promote and ship them to workplace staff. In a twist on the formulation, Snackpass, which in June raised $70 million at an over $400 million valuation, lets workplace staff create group food and drinks orders.

As for Sharebite, it’s designed to assist corporations centralize meals ordering and expense administration for workers each in-office and distant, Rao defined. The platform offers staff with a curated choice of meals from a community of 1000’s of eating places, from which they will place orders to have them delivered to their residence or house or a devoted pickup spot within the workplace.

On the again finish, employers can see particular person worker’s and groups’ receipts, reimbursements and pending requests. Admins have the flexibility to assign allowance limits and choose restaurant companions. Forward of occasions and workforce orders, managers obtain an e mail giving them the selection of three to 5 eating places chosen based mostly on the employees’s wants and the workplace supervisor’s standards.

Just lately, Sharebite started rolling out what Rao considers to be the corporate’s first fintech product: Sharebite Passport. A fee card, Sharebite Passport permits staff to buy meals at any restaurant or third-party supply platform they select. Firms can set an allowance for supply and dine-in, and even grocery purchases.

For each transaction on its platform, Sharebite donates to nonprofit companions, together with Metropolis Harvest and Feeding America.

“Sharebite’s enterprise-focused expertise allows corporations to simply combine by way of its API and provision worker meals allowances throughout all ranges of the group, with 1000’s of options that may be custom-made to every group’s budgetary choice and compliance necessities,” Rao mentioned. “As the way forward for work continues to evolve, the business might want to discover methods to ship and supply advantages that meet the wants of all staff irrespective of how or the place they’re working.”

Meals supply collaborations haven’t all the time labored to eating places’ advantages. Fee charges on some platforms can account for 15% to 30% of an order’s gross sales. (Sharebite costs 12.5% and up.) And promotions like Grubhub’s ill-fated “free lunch” in New York Metropolis can overwhelm eating places with surprising orders.

However Rao says that Sharebite, which doesn’t rent its personal supply drivers, works with eating places to determine a streamlined order retrieval system and point-of-sales integration. Eating places get a devoted assist supervisor, and funds are “immediate,” Rao claims.

Bucking the broader downtrend within the supply phase, Rao says that Sharebite’s buyer base has grown to over 250 company purchasers and “government-owned entities” like NJ Transit. In December 2020, Sharebite introduced an settlement with WeWork to put in drop-off stations at 4 of WeWork’s shared workplace areas in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Sharebite additionally has a partnership with HqO, an actual property software program vendor, to construct the previous’s expertise into HqO’s product for shared workplaces.

“Traditionally, Sharebite’s main competitor within the company enviornment has been Seamless, acquired and re-branded by Grubhub,” Rao mentioned. “The typical enterprise buyer that switches over to Sharebite from Grubhub/Seamless does so after roughly 18 years of getting been on the incumbent’s platform.”

To this point, Sharebite has raised $56 million. The corporate employs 150 individuals.