EP39: Taking Food Personally w/Thrive's Krishi Fagwani

In this episode, I invited Krishi Fagwani — founder of Thrive, a company in the food aggregation space.

This space is dominated by Zomato + Swiggy, but suffers from a few issues like high restaurant commissions, low customer rewards etc.

Thrive wants to solve that. They are a restaurant first platform offering low commissions, rewarding customers for their activity with cashbacks & offering various loyalty programs.

It is a platform where restaurants & customers can thrive, together!

I had a lot of fun talking to Krishi, and it was like a crash course in the food biz. We spoke about a range of topics like:

(00:00): Introduction 

(01:42): What was it about the food industry that appealed to Krishi + how he got started 

(07:09): First time entrepreneurs + executing the business plan + navigating through various iterations 

(10:45): Competing w/ the BIG FISHES (Zomato & Swiggy) 

(18:34): Leveraging existing business partners during COVID for growth 

(20:32): Journey through the years + customer traction 

(28:47): Building the ultimate platform for foodies - digitalising the word of mouth 

(35:36): HYPOTHETICAL Q - would Krishi sell Thrive to Zomato? 

(41:46): BLOCKER FOR FUTURE GROWTH? 

(45:02): Why Krishi is not getting into QCom? 

(47:36): 10Y in the industry - learnings and key takeaways 

(51:56): RAPID FIRE Qs!