Business opportunities by liberating data, case study in restaurant Industry

There are still a lot of (software) business to be unlocked by digitizing paper records and connecting that to the rest of the world as this case study shows.

Created: by Pradeep GowdaUpdated:Aug 01, 2024Tagged: startup · casestudy .

I came across this interview via my fellow-alumnus, and friend Swaroop CH’s twitter feed.

For many reasons the story of this startup “PlateIQ” is interesting to me. In silicon valley code-speak of “we are the X of Y”, “PlateIQ is the Mint of restaurant industry”.

They essentially unlocked the data hidden in receipts, invoices of restaurants and made it easy for the businesses to understand their cost of doing business and uncover inefficiencies that affect the bottom line.

This is essentially what my previous company(ENthEnergy) was trying to do with Building energy. The typical energy bill of a large commercial building is obscure for a layperson. Add it to the vagaries of different occupancy patterns, geographical variations, etc., and you essentially have a large bill, that you, as a building owner/occupant have little understanding of.

Anyway getting back to the interview of Ram Jayaraman, CTO of PlateIQ with Garry Tan, these are some of the things that stood out:

Overall, I think what PlateIQ is doing – liberating data and exposing inefficiencies caused by information asymmetry can be model for building similar “eat the world” software companies in other niches.