This startup is solving restaurants’ woes in Tricity through artificial intelligence

TNN | Updated: Jun 30, 2019, 11:57 IST

PantryDash is a one-stop shop for restaurants to purchase all required supplies

By: Hardik Anand
CHANDIGARH: PantryDash, a startup founded by former PU student Anirudh Arora with help of the university’s Centre for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, is helping solve restaurants’ problems in Tricity through artificial intelligence (AI).
The startup is a one-stop shop for restaurants to purchase all required supplies, including fruits and vegetables, poultry, meats, packaging and housekeeping material, groceries, dairy etc. The restaurants are provided with a point of sale (POS) system by PantryDash, which through AI keeps a record of their daily sale of items and then creates an order of raw materials for them on its own.
“From production, logistics to supply, our startup takes care of it all. We have our own farms where we grow raw vegetables that we deliver to restaurants. Our technology saves restaurants’ time because they don’t have to make orders again and again from different vendors everyday. As per their requirements, their orders are made and delivered to them fresh everyday from one place,” said Arora, who passed out from UIET in 2017.

The idea to start Pantry-Dash came from Arora’s previous startup, DND (daily nutritional diet), which was also incubated at Panjab University’s entrepreneurship centre. “DND is a chain of restaurants that promotes healthy eating. To run our restaurant, we used to face problems in ordering supplies everyday from multiple vendors. So we thought we should create an online marketplace that solves this problem,” Arora said.
Within two months of the launch, PantryDash has partnered with more than 30 restaurants in Tricity. “We partnered with farmers in Haryana and Punjab, wherein we took a share of their land to practice farming through aeroponics and hydroponics. We have also partnered with poultry farms. The biggest challenge was the logistics that required a major funding. We secured it through another entrepreneur, who was an initial investor in a cab-aggregator service,” said Arora.