Business in F&B includes fields as diverse as inventory and customer service: Ashish Tulsian
Business in F&B includes fields as diverse as inventory and customer service: Ashish Tulsian

As the F&B sector continue to dominate the start-up space, many may think that it’s the easiest way to make some quick bucks. Ask Ashish Tulsian, and you will know that the above idea is a myth and how! After working with Techno Apex, a company dealing with power SMS, for good five years, Tulsian invested in restaurant as a side business along with a friend who had a family business. Rasoi Express, a North Indian Mughlai joint was a novel and great experience for the first three months and the duo enjoyed the initial excitement. However, it was not before long that the friends understood the gravity of doing business in F&B which include fields as diverse as inventory and customer service.

Talking to Restaurant India, Tulsian revealed the challenges he faced unequivocally and narrated his story behind Posist. Here is a selection of the interview-

What made you quit the restaurant business?
Taking up a restaurant business as a part time engagement is a nightmare. You need to be on the floor of your restaurant to do justice to your business, to understand your brand culture and your customer expectation. The working period for a restaurateur includes 17-18 hours every day of the week and unless you are fully into it you cannot do justice. You have to be ready to compromise on family, rituals, celebrations and occasions in order to make the special days memorable for your customer. Before long I understood that operating a restaurant was not my cup of tea and quit to follow my passion for tech innovation.

From restaurant business to app building – what was the trigger?
However, one year in the business did one good for me though, helped me understand the tech side of the business. This knowledge resulted in the innovation that eventually gave birth to POSist, where POS stands for ‘Point of Sale’ system – a leading cloud based Point of Sale solutions provider. The idea occurred as I started looking for a software solution to automate my restaurant. The sheer dearth of any such product in the industry surprised me. I found that 25 year old companies are into providing hospitality and service-oriented software. Unable to find anything suitable, I ended up building one in 2012.

How does POSist work?
Specialized in Point of Sale services, POSist helps a standalone food outlet to a large food chain manage functions like Billing, CRM, Inventory Control, Recipe and Wastage management, Centralized Menu Management, Vendor Management and more. Real-time mobile reporting also helps a restaurant owner keep a close watch on his business.

A complete Restaurant Management Platform, POSist can be integrated with application like accounting softwares, CRMs, hotel suites and even ERP back ends like SAP. With 61% of restaurants looking for fully integrated POS solutions that manage everything from online ordering to detailed financial reporting, I look forward to provide better unified solutions to the restaurant industry.

It’s been 5 years since you launched your app, would you call yourself successful?
Founded with the motto of providing "Training free" and "Easy to use" scalable solutions, POSist today has successfully registered a PAN-India presence in over 90 cities and 5 countries. We make half a million bill everyday and are the first company to provide a complete online POS solution for restaurants. The product is also Internet outage friendly and can continue to work without connection for 3 continuous days thus benefitting the restaurants which are remotely located with intermittent internet connection. 

 
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