Bengaluru-based Dishq, a food AI startup focused on food and beverages industry, has raised ₹2.7 crores ($400,000) in pre-seed funding from Techstars‘ food and agriculture technology accelerator Farm To Fork, along with Arts Alliance Ventures.
Other participants in the round include The Syndicate Fund, angel investor Sven Hensen, founder & MD, Mayato. Artesian Venture Partners, and Zeroth, an early-stage startup accelerator, were among the existing investors to participate.
The fresh funds will be used to boost its engineering team and accelerate its sales and marketing efforts.
Dishq was founded by Kishan Vasani, along with Sai Sreenivas Kodur in 2015. It uses food science in combination with artificial intelligence to understand and predict people’s tastes. With the insights gained using its technology platform, it aims to assist food and beverages industry by providing personalized food experience to their customers.
The startup claims to have clients across six food business sectors including food aggregator, restaurant chains, cloud kitchen, recipe platform, technology partner, and smart kitchen appliance. Dishq’s platform provides over 30 million recommendations to over 176,000 people across more than 1,000 restaurants.
Some of the popular clients of Dishq using its services include Hungerbox, Petoo, among others.
“Our technology essentially brings greater alignment between producers and consumers, and we’re truly honoured and excited to have the backing of such fantastic investors for our vision.” Kishan Vasani, CEO at Dishq, said.
Dishq has created a niche for itself in the online and offline food domain. Rather than competing with the players in the growing food industry, its B2B solutions serve to help the industry. The stiff competition among the top online food delivery players Zomato and Swiggy to dominate the market will only help the goals of the startup.
Other recent events in the foodtech domain are SmartQ acquires Goodbox’s cafeteria business, Eatigo raises funds from TripAdvisor in pre-series C and Placio acquires subscription-based food delivery startup Paco Meals.