What started as a fledgling firm with just 10 clients by a group formed by four engineering college pass-outs last year has turned into a business with more than 70 clients and 1,000 users in just five months’ time. Bhookkad.com is a web service that provides offers to its customers on food during ‘slack time’ of restaurants. “We were inspired by the ‘happy hours’ offered by various hotels and thought — what if there is an app which gives you a time when you can avail of discounts in various hotels. Plus every restaurant has slack hours and if we can connect the consumers and the hotels, both of them can benefit from each other,” said Shripal Lodha,who is a mechanical engineering passout of CoEP, and who, along with Ashutosh Ukey (CoEP), Makarand Patil (SSVPS, Dhule) and Akshay Sadalge (CoEP) started this website. Bhookkad.com was launched on August 18, 2014 with tie-ups with 10 restaurants from Pune. “We have some themes to attract youngsters like Couple Hours, Party Hours and Happy Hours etc. We have organised three parties so far where both the party organisers get a discount as well as the hotel gets business on a lean day. Restaurants are free to provide offers any time they prefer. We have collaborated with 70+ restaurants and are planning to cover all of Pune in the next few months,” said Akshay Sadalge. When a customer logs into the website, he gets a choice of restaurants to choose from. Once he chooses a restaurant, he gets to know what kind of deals that restaurant is giving. “When the customer clicks on the deal he wants to take, he gets a coupon code. He also gets a timing and the coupon is valid only for that time on that particular day. So far, over 1,000 people have actually used this website. Most of the restaurants we have are in and around Shivaji Nagar and Kothrud but we are expanding,” said Makarand Patil. The team now has eight engineers with dedicated web developers, a marketing strategist, an account manager and a business relations planner. “We are currently working on making an Android and Windows-based app for the business so that more and more people can make use of it. Secondly, we are also planning to take on ice-cream parlours and bakeries and connect customers with them,” said Ashutosh Ukey.
