Midnight delivery is the new trend in Indian F&B segment
Midnight delivery is the new trend in Indian F&B segment

Lifestyle changes like people working in odd shifts, late-night studying and sleeping habits have resulted in a sudden upsurge of the demand of food and other products at late night. This emerging trend has give birth to a new business segment – Midnight Food Delivery. Hence, the particular business model addresses people’s requirements during late night.

India is the back office for many other countries. There are thousands of people who work in night shifts pushing demand for the food at night. Seeing the open field for a ready market, many players are booming in the midnight delivery segment targeting a very niche clientele.

Players like The Booty Call, Crave Busters, Midnight Munchies, Take It That One, Fly by Knight, Batman Delivers and Midnight Xprs not only deliver food but also deliver chocolates, medicines, etc at your doorsteps during midnight.

Not only working people, but hostels have also been a big market for these players. These players generally deliver food in the 15 km of their radar. Since there are very few players in the market, the sector has shown a remarkable growth and it is leading the business expansion in tier II and tier III cities.

The driving force

Booty Call, launched by an hotelier Ishan Singh Mann, has seen an increase in the number of people ordering in the late night hours from the first day of its operation. “Working with ITC Hotels for longer period, I wanted to start something of my own in the food business and Midnight deliveries gave me a way into it as this segment is the fastest growing in the country over the last two year,” says Mann.

On the other hand, Midnight Munchies started by Arjun Sethi left his sales job in Delhi to start midnight food start-up in South Delhi. The store delivers food from 10 pm to 4 am. The menu consists of food, beverages and deserts which almost covers 100 items. Sethi says, “Nowadays, a company want their employees to work hard. If employees work till night, the company usually provide them with food. So we decided to provide food to those companies and employees who work late and even later.”

 27-year old Neha Jain started Fly by Night in Mumbai in 2012. Jain came up with the idea when she was working as an analytics consultant with search engine giant Google. She found that there was no one in Mumbai to deliver food to her late night.

Marketing Strategy

The midnight players are using various online and offline techniques to promote themselves. Social media sites like Facebook is the one where you can get them talking about their services. “However we market through Facebook and other social media sites, but offline marketing like partnering with an event company and word-of-mouth seems much profitable to us,” elaborates Mann.

Capital Required

Like any other business, midnight delivery doesn’t require an investment of more than Rs 5 lakh because the market is still untapped in India. This business has huge scope for expansion, not only pan India but globally. The Booty call which was started from the owner’s home is now located at Shanti Niketan, Dhaula Kuan with plans to expand in Gurgaon and Noida. The firm is looking for funding opportunities from a reliable partner or an investor.

Are Investors Ready?

As this unique business of midnight food delivery has very few players and it is growing on a larger scale in India, investors feel that the business is good to capitalise at the early stage. “The business model of midnight food delivery is extremely interesting. As it a unique business in India, it is growing rapidly,” says Gaurav Khachru, a start-up investor to SMEs.

“The business model has very few players in India and that too most of them are only in Tier I cities. So it would be good if entrepreneurs try to scale it up in other cities across India. Investors are ready to invest in these companies as they are aware of the fact that the market would certainly double in future.”

 
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