Sharebite, a startup that partners with restaurants to deliver food to corporate customers, announced today that it has raised $39 million in a Series B round led by Prosus with participation from Fiserv, Contour Venture Partners, Reign Ventures, London Technology Club and Not Boring Fund. Co-founder and CEO Dilip Rao tells gotechbusiness.com that the proceeds will be spent on increasing Sharebite’s market share, launching new products and developing AI-powered tools to “improve the meal ordering experience.”
Rao and Mohsin Memon, the other co-founder of Sharebite, were inspired to launch the company in 2015 after years of working for Wall Street firms. Mohsin was an analyst at Bank of America, while Rao completed a career at Goldman Sachs to join Credit Suisse as an investment banker.
“Combined with advanced technology, a food benefit for workers becomes the great equalizer as it applies universally to workers regardless of rank, location, tenure or geography. The fact is, everyone eats,” Rao told gotechbusiness.com in an email interview. “Sharebite’s platform serves as the source of truth for all things employee meal benefits, empowering HR, IT and accounting teams to centralize all functions and allocate costs under one platform, with a single invoice to pay.”
Sure, there’s no shortage of food-ordering startups geared toward the enterprise. While the transition to work from home during the office-dependent business pandemic has made it a riskier gamble, there are signs of a bounce back in hubs like New York City. Fueled by venture capitalists, companies like Dejbox design their own meals and partner with other companies to cook them, sell them, and deliver them to office workers. In a twist on the formula, Snackpass, which raised $70 million in June at a valuation of more than $400 million, lets office workers make group food and beverage orders.
As for Sharebite, it’s designed to help companies centralize food ordering and expense management for employees, both in the office and remotely, Rao explained. The platform provides employees with a curated selection of meals from a network of thousands of restaurants, from which they can place orders for delivery to their home or apartment or to a dedicated office pick-up location.
At the back, employers can see the receipts of individual employees and teams, refunds and pending applications. Admins have the ability to assign limits and select restaurant partners. Prior to events and team orders, managers receive an email with a choice of three to five restaurants selected based on staff needs and the office manager’s criteria.
Recently, Sharebite began rolling out what Rao considers to be the company’s first fintech product: Sharebite Passport. With a payment card, Sharebite Passport, employees can purchase meals from any restaurant or third-party delivery platform they choose. Businesses can set a fee for delivery and dinner, and even for groceries.
For every transaction on its platform, Sharebite donates to nonprofit partners, including City Harvest and Feeding America.
“Sharebite’s enterprise-focused technology enables companies to easily integrate through the API and provide employee food benefits at all levels of the organization, with thousands of features that can be customized to fit any organization’s budgetary preferences and compliance requirements,” said Rao. “As the future of work continues to evolve, the industry will need to find ways to provide and deliver benefits that meet the needs of all workers, regardless of how or where they work.”
Food delivery partnerships haven’t always worked in the restaurant’s favor. Commission fees on some platforms can make up 15% to 30% of an order’s sales. (Sharebite charges 12.5% and above.) And promotions like Grubhub’s fateful “free lunch” in New York City can flood restaurants with unexpected orders.
But Rao says Sharebite, which doesn’t hire its own delivery drivers, is working with restaurants to build a streamlined order pickup system and point of sale integration. Restaurants get a dedicated support manager and payments are “fast,” Rao claims.
Against the broader downward trend in the delivery segment, Rao says Sharebite’s customer base has grown to more than 250 corporate customers and “government entities” such as NJ Transit. In December 2020, Sharebite announced an agreement with WeWork to install drop-off stations at four of WeWork’s shared office locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Sharebite is also partnering with HqO, a real estate software provider, to embed the former’s technology into HqO’s shared office product.
“Historically, Sharebite’s main competitor in the business arena was Seamless, acquired and rebranded by Grubhub,” Rao said. “The average business customer who switches to Sharebite from Grubhub/Seamless does so after being on the incumbent’s platform for about 18 years.”
To date, Sharebite has raised $56 million. The company employs 150 people.
