Now an app to satiate your food cravings

KOCHI: If you are one of those shelling out exorbitant delivery charges just because you do not figure in the four or five-km radius of your favourite hotel, worry no more. Picture this. The whole of the delectable array of cuisine offered in Thiruvananthapuram at your fingertips. Now you have ‘Rabbito’ to satiate all your cravings. An app solely dedicated to order food from any eatery in the city, Rabbito was launched three weeks ago by a group of youngsters. The foodies are celebrating the app, which is getting downloaded at a frantic rate.

Now place your order from your favourite restaurant and within 45 minutes, you get your food delivered, and that too at an affordable rate, the makers of the app says. Launched on March 10, Rabbito has hitherto garnered more than 700 downloads, much to the delight of the new players in town.

The need to have such an app struck the team when they noticed the lack of a facility to get piping hot food delivered on time. Anto Joseph C J, one of the brains behind the app says, “When one of my friends tried to order food for her aged mother, she found she had to shell out more than H100 as delivery charge itself. This got us thinking about the need for an easy and affordable mechanism to order food.”
Rabbito was thus born.

“Once you open the app, it gives you suggestions of the eateries near you. You can then choose your hotel, sift through their menu and place the order,” says Anto who launched the app along with a bunch of his friends. Once the order is placed, the hotel gets intimated and once they accept the order, the delivery boys are intimated.

In the first phase, they have included the Chakai to Kaniyapuram stretch and the Kazhakootam to Medical College stretch. Around 26 hotels have been roped in till now. “We have divided the whole city into four and intend to spread out to the next three areas in the coming weeks,” says Anto. We envisage to map the hotels across Thiruvananthapuram in the app whereby you can get your food delivered from any nook and cranny in the city, he adds. “Our aim is to ensure even if you and your favourite hotel are located at two extremes, you should be able to have the food within the stipulated time,” he says.

One can even place an order via the website of Rabbito. The app users can post reviews and give ratings as well. One can either make the payment online or avail the cash on delivery option.  An amount of H30 is charged for delivery and the orders can be placed from 11 am until 11 pm.

Currently, a majority of the app users include those in Technopark and office goers. “Although the current delivery time is 45 minutes, we are able to deliver by 30 minutes. In future, we intend to reduce the delivery time,” Anto says. And it is not just hotels that the team plans to add. The team is also considering merging into their fold the ever burgeoning numbers of home chefs.

Anto remembers how they received one order when it was just three minutes to their closing time. “The order was placed but the hotel had closed by then. On learning the requirement was urgent and that the customer was okay with arranging food from another hotel, we ensured that food was delivered,” Anto recalls. One can also schedule the delivery of food.  

“We are set to launch a toll-free number as many aged people are requesting for such a service. Many have informed they aren’t adept at handling the technology and we decided to launch a toll-free number for that. So you just need to call and place the order.”A ‘Food Carnival’ starting April 1 until Sunday has been launched. The team plans to expand to Kollam and other districts in future.