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Jolly Food Fellow - Food Discovery Platform
What is Jolly Food Fellow?
Jolly Food Fellow is the Ultimate Food Discovery Platform. Relish the best food videos of items served across top restaurants in your city.
Tell us more about your team ?
Rajiv has done his masters from IIT Kanpur and has worked with Tata Communications in Business Analytics. He has a chain of Juice Cafes in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Baroda and Anand and has been successfully running it for the last 6 years.
Niraj has been in the management team of setting up from scratch a group of educational institutions, an IT company building an education management product, an IT company with services and training in Digital Marketing.
The team is comprised of IT Engineers, Content specialists, Video Editors, MBAs and highly passionate and stable team members.
How did you come up with the idea ?
Rajiv was looking out for solutions for his existing chain of cafes and felt it could address a larger market.
Niraj was looking out for a product with scalability and when Rajiv asked Niraj if he could help in solving the problem of marketing with ROI for restaurants, the Idea of Jolly Food Fellow was born.
What problem are you solving ?
We saw that there were no options for consumers to find food of their tastes and preferences. Images were only partially able to give a representation and so the idea of food videos was born.
Getting the closest look possible without really tasting it was only possible with a video of the item being made.
No one was doing it for thousands of food outlets and we wanted to exploit this void and give the outlet the option to showcase #yahanacchakyamiltahai at their outlet.
This helped consumers view the videos on our platform and other 3rd party platforms including Facebook and decide to go for it or note it for later.
How does it work ?
We created a fantastic team of professionals who could turn simple food item videos to tasty food proposals.
We talked to a lot of food outlets and started making professional videos for their popular items. Once we had enough good videos, we launched our portal and also used channels like Facebook and Youtube to distribute our video content. Now, millions of people view our food videos and give us tips on what else they look forward to.
What is your target market ?
The advertisement market in India is currently INR 15444 crores estimated to grow to INR 32000 crores by 2022.
Food restaurant content and promotion market is pegged at INR 4300 crores.
What is your competitive advantage ?
We not only promote and market content, but we also create content and distribute content. We can take cost of content creation, distribution and promotion from our merchant partners.
We have a deep understanding of technology and content, this is a rare combination. Our platform is available on web, android app, ios app and we have created over 400+ videos and have content of over 1000+ hours. We are in a niche segment and have a first mover advantage in our segment.
By getting foovies made from us, food outlets have better discovery for items for which they are known for.
Our merchants have narrated many stories where consumers have shown them our videos on their mobile devices and demanded to be served items shown in the videos.
How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'your venture' to actually launching it in the market ?
We took around 3 months to discuss the idea and another 3 months to do the prototype post which it was launched in the market.
How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies ?
We use digital marketing on Facebook, Fleet on Street model for meeting restaurants. Our service and price sensitive discovery with great ROI for customers is our acquisition strategy.
What is the revenue model ?
Our business model is advertisement based model and service charges for various services we provide our merchant partners including analytics and video making and promotions.
We provide the most optimized Engaged Consumer Base cost and are preferred partners for branding and marketing for food vendors. FMCG and food outlets are a natural advertisers segment for us since our platform is ready to serve advertisements to food seeking consumers.
Our videos have already reached out to over 100 million users and this helps us to get advertisement revenue for our videos.
What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision ?
We want to empower the consumer with informed choices and entertainment around food.
For merchants, we want to give them low cost and high ROI yield in marketing that is done using latest marketing techniques and methods.
What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community ?
We are looking for community members to support us by viewing our videos on www.facebook.com/pg/jollyfoodfellow/videos and keep giving us tips to improve our quality of recipes covered and other consumer feedbacks.
Jatin Chaudhary Salesman @eChaiVentures l Good at managing WhatsApp groups n organizing high quality, large gatherings at low cost :-) l Observer l Fmr Global Shaper @WEF
@Niraj - Typically how much time it take you to create 1 video n how many people from your team are involved in it? For example, Manek Chawk video.
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@jatin10 - We usually make a video live on Facebook within 25 days of order confirmation. Usually around 6 team members coordinate to get a video live and kicking on the platform. Every department is handled by specialists with deep experience and high focus to deliver awesome videos that 'entice viewers to dine!'
Keyur Bhalavat Technophile | Innovator | Serial Entrepreneur | Sport Fanatic | Travel Buff
@niraj: In your experience at Jolly Food Fellow till date, is there any strategy which went wrong? If yes, what was it? And what corrective actions you & your team took?
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@keyur-v-bhalavat Lots of things needs to be altered and changed from the strategy perspective. It needs constant review and revision. One of the insights was that we felt restaurant owners would go for a system that would help them build a great communication medium with their existing customers. However, they would get stuck at the implementation level since they were not the ones doing executions. Like collecting mobile numbers on tablets and making bills. We could thankfully overcome these challenges by introducing Videos to do the communication, which was a very low implementation challenge for them and we took the difficult part (Shooting and promotion)
Mihir Parmar Lead eChai USA. We have eChai individual city chapters in more than 10+ cities across the USA, and we enable cross-border collaborations via events across the globe.
What is your revenue model ? You charge restaurants or users for this ? How you earn money from this ?
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@Mihir3009 we do charge restaurants for video making and promotion. We offer them unmatched quality at unbelievable prices and that helps in closing deals. Another revenue mode for us is the big FMCG brands like Fortune, Vimal etc. who are ready to invest in building their brand by advertising with us.
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@hanuj_t We have tried a lot of strategies and most where we have been able to give consistent efforts, have worked well for us. One strategy of answering all our consumer queries has given us the most benefit and worked really well for us.
Shrijay Sheth Shrijay is an eCommerce industry veteran and an entrepreneur with 10+ years of experience in working with businesses of varied geography, scale, culture and lifecycle. Shrijay has worked with some of the most disruptive businesses like Qualcomm, LegalZoom.com, TheBouqs.com and more. He is a co-founder at Legal eCommerce start-up www.LegalWiz.in and runs an eCommerce strategy and analytics consultancy Hire4Higher Consulting. Shrijay is a true believer of people first philosophy, and largely credits his development to wide range of traveling opportunities he has gotten, both in professional and personal capacity.
How do you make videos viral? Can you give some quick tips to increase organic engagement?
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@shrijay-sheth To make a video viral we use consistency and engaging content. Also using viral enabled platforms like Facebook helps the cause. To increase organic engagement you have to do detailed analytics on the platforms you are present on to know what people are liking, commenting, ignoring etc. Then do theme based experiments like post videos with calls to action and measure if people are taking the actions as per bench marked figures.
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@aditya-dave Rajiv floated the idea with me and we took around 3-4 months to start the venture as co-founders. We did extensive discussions on various aspects at length and got into a common and clear understanding of what kind of company we wanted to build. These discussions helped a lot in selecting the team as we knew what type of people we wanted. Our selection process was refined within the first 10 team members or so, since both Rajiv and I took the interviews together. We have a fantastic HR in Neha, who was able to identify great talent and schedule interviews and do the joining formalities.
Dhruv Gupta A researcher turned entrepreneur, a computer scientist by certificate and a design thinker by training who did his first startup at 18.
He has built 3 (three) tech startups till now and has been part of the journey for many startups as consultant, mentor and investor.
@Niraj - Have you said NO to any of your clients yet..?? If you have, What were the reasons of it..??
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
Unfortunately we have had to say NO many times. Mostly it has been with prospects who wanted a creative direction which was against our channel vision, like showcase some item or dish which we as Jolly Food Fellow felt would not appeal to our consumers. Other times we refused to shoot unhygienic locations since we don't promote what we would not personally recommend. We work with some basic values and principles and if some things are demanded against that, we say NO as we are confident it will benefit us in the long run.
Sir I am already running two food delivery kitchens in Mumbai located near santacruz & powai , The kitchens capacity is huge can take around 2000 meals a day can you help me or I connect me to anyone who can get these many orders or how am I suppose to scale up,The name of my brand is 'Ethnic kitchen' . Also founding is what i am looking for ,currently supplying to more than 500 corporates on daily basis
Niraj Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
Hi @saurabh-padwal, sorry for the delay in reply, your message got lost in my over communicated desk. Do share your credentials with me and i would be glad to have a talk with you to understand your requirements in more details to be able to help you.
Share feedback Or Ask questions Or Discuss
Jatin Chaudhary
Salesman @eChaiVentures l Good at managing WhatsApp groups n organizing high quality, large gatherings at low cost :-) l Observer l Fmr Global Shaper @WEF
@Niraj - Typically how much time it take you to create 1 video n how many people from your team are involved in it? For example, Manek Chawk video.
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@jatin10 - We usually make a video live on Facebook within 25 days of order confirmation. Usually around 6 team members coordinate to get a video live and kicking on the platform. Every department is handled by specialists with deep experience and high focus to deliver awesome videos that 'entice viewers to dine!'
Keyur Bhalavat
Technophile | Innovator | Serial Entrepreneur | Sport Fanatic | Travel Buff
@niraj: In your experience at Jolly Food Fellow till date, is there any strategy which went wrong? If yes, what was it? And what corrective actions you & your team took?
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@keyur-v-bhalavat Lots of things needs to be altered and changed from the strategy perspective. It needs constant review and revision. One of the insights was that we felt restaurant owners would go for a system that would help them build a great communication medium with their existing customers. However, they would get stuck at the implementation level since they were not the ones doing executions. Like collecting mobile numbers on tablets and making bills. We could thankfully overcome these challenges by introducing Videos to do the communication, which was a very low implementation challenge for them and we took the difficult part (Shooting and promotion)
Mihir Parmar
Lead eChai USA. We have eChai individual city chapters in more than 10+ cities across the USA, and we enable cross-border collaborations via events across the globe.
What is your revenue model ? You charge restaurants or users for this ? How you earn money from this ?
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@Mihir3009 we do charge restaurants for video making and promotion. We offer them unmatched quality at unbelievable prices and that helps in closing deals. Another revenue mode for us is the big FMCG brands like Fortune, Vimal etc. who are ready to invest in building their brand by advertising with us.
Hanuj Tilwani
Founder's Office at DemandFarm | Ex-Founder at Miho (B2B SaaS)
@Niraj which social media marketing strategy has proved to be best for you?
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@hanuj_t We have tried a lot of strategies and most where we have been able to give consistent efforts, have worked well for us. One strategy of answering all our consumer queries has given us the most benefit and worked really well for us.
Shrijay Sheth
Shrijay is an eCommerce industry veteran and an entrepreneur with 10+ years of experience in working with businesses of varied geography, scale, culture and lifecycle. Shrijay has worked with some of the most disruptive businesses like Qualcomm, LegalZoom.com, TheBouqs.com and more. He is a co-founder at Legal eCommerce start-up www.LegalWiz.in and runs an eCommerce strategy and analytics consultancy Hire4Higher Consulting. Shrijay is a true believer of people first philosophy, and largely credits his development to wide range of traveling opportunities he has gotten, both in professional and personal capacity.
How do you make videos viral? Can you give some quick tips to increase organic engagement?
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@shrijay-sheth To make a video viral we use consistency and engaging content. Also using viral enabled platforms like Facebook helps the cause. To increase organic engagement you have to do detailed analytics on the platforms you are present on to know what people are liking, commenting, ignoring etc. Then do theme based experiments like post videos with calls to action and measure if people are taking the actions as per bench marked figures.
Aditya Dave
Soil testing for farmers
@Niraj How did you form a right team for this venture , as we have problem for finding right persons
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
@aditya-dave Rajiv floated the idea with me and we took around 3-4 months to start the venture as co-founders. We did extensive discussions on various aspects at length and got into a common and clear understanding of what kind of company we wanted to build. These discussions helped a lot in selecting the team as we knew what type of people we wanted. Our selection process was refined within the first 10 team members or so, since both Rajiv and I took the interviews together. We have a fantastic HR in Neha, who was able to identify great talent and schedule interviews and do the joining formalities.
Dhruv Gupta
A researcher turned entrepreneur, a computer scientist by certificate and a design thinker by training who did his first startup at 18. He has built 3 (three) tech startups till now and has been part of the journey for many startups as consultant, mentor and investor.
@Niraj - Have you said NO to any of your clients yet..?? If you have, What were the reasons of it..??
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
Unfortunately we have had to say NO many times. Mostly it has been with prospects who wanted a creative direction which was against our channel vision, like showcase some item or dish which we as Jolly Food Fellow felt would not appeal to our consumers. Other times we refused to shoot unhygienic locations since we don't promote what we would not personally recommend. We work with some basic values and principles and if some things are demanded against that, we say NO as we are confident it will benefit us in the long run.
Saurabh
Sir I am already running two food delivery kitchens in Mumbai located near santacruz & powai , The kitchens capacity is huge can take around 2000 meals a day can you help me or I connect me to anyone who can get these many orders or how am I suppose to scale up,The name of my brand is 'Ethnic kitchen' . Also founding is what i am looking for ,currently supplying to more than 500 corporates on daily basis
Niraj
Entrepreneur | cofounder @jollyfoodfellow | Dreamer and Implementer | #Ahmedabad i |
Hi @saurabh-padwal, sorry for the delay in reply, your message got lost in my over communicated desk. Do share your credentials with me and i would be glad to have a talk with you to understand your requirements in more details to be able to help you.
John Dsouza
Sounds exciting