SmartQ, a food-tech startup backed by YourNest Angel fund has acquired Nexus Venture Partners-backed Goodbox‘s cafeteria business in an all-cash deal, details of which are yet to be disclosed. According to the sources, the size of the deal is speculated to be ₹5.5 crores ($800,000).
This acquisition will help SmartQ to expand its customer base, while Goodbox is looking to focus on its hyperlocal business by offloading its cafeteria business.
Commenting on the acquisition, Abey Zachariah, CEO, Goodbox, said, “We have sold our cafeteria business to SmartQ. We wanted to focus on the hyperlocal business and are exiting the cafeteria solution as it is non-core to us now”.
Bengaluru-based Goodbox is a platform that provides businesses with a mini app within five minutes, along with providing a mega-app for the consumers to access 1000s of mini apps. It was founded by Abey Zachariah, along with other team members in 2015.
Goodbox enables businesses with mini-apps that help them scale their business using the features of a readymade mini app like messaging, online payments, reward points, etc. It also helps them save time as well as money.
SmartQ was founded by Abhishek Ashok and Krishna Wage in 2015. It aims to digitize food courts, cafeterias across malls, corporates, colleges, hospitals and other industry to provide a world-class experience with cutting-edge technology solutions.
It enables cafeterias across different industries by providing technological solutions to make transactions cashless and reducing the queues and waiting time for customers. The various products provided by SmartQ for a comprehensive digital cafeteria experience are SmartQ app, smart station, POS system, digital wallet, etc.
The food-tech industry is experiencing a technological innovation with many startups entering the industry. In the digital cafeteria domain, there are other startups providing competition to SmartQ, some of them include HungerBox, Zeta, among others.
In a related development, HungerBox had recently raised ₹30 crores in series A funding.