Rs 200 Crore Hospitality Sector Investment by Big Fish Ventures

With eyes firmly set on becoming a leader in the casual dining space, Big Fish ventures, a Delhi based start-up plans to open new outlets by raising around 200 crore rupees through venture capital funding. The start-up venture which caters to café dining and hangout segment of the market and runs premium dining lounges like Vault Café, Garam Dharam is mulling to launch new brands like Public connection, Oh My god (OMG), Junkyard, Three Peg Down over next 3 months.

With a host of brands in operation and new launches in the pipeline, Big Fish ventures indeed have ambitious plans in place as it aims to clock sales of over 50 crore in FY 15-16 and 150 crore in FY 16-17 respectively.

“Our vision is to become a super brand in Indian casual dining, café and lounge space. Unlike other brands who focus on creating single brand with standardized products, we aim to bring a cluster of concept based different brands across genres and large formats”, said Umang Tiwari, a veteran in Hospitality and founder of Big Fish ventures.

The company also plans to beef up their presence by increasing the total number of outlets to over 40 under different brands and by extending their presence across 8 cosmopolitan cities.

Underlining the future plans, Tiwari said, “Our team will create, build and operate over 40 outlets by FY 17-18 under brands created by us. Each outlet will be known for its prime location, unique concept, world class food quality and unforgettable service experience. Additionally, we plan invest over 200 crores in building our outlets and hope to register a gross sales of over 500 crores by FY 18-19,

“Big Fish will be present in 8 cosmopolitan cities of India and will be employing over 5000 people servicing over 6 lac orders per month across our outlets with daily gross transaction value, he added.”

The company has also roped in Nishant Singhal co-founder of  YouWeCan ventures along with cricketer Yuvraj Singh.

“We want to create an investment vehicle across cuisines and concepts in the restaurant and eating out space. Funds between 50 or 60 crore for the first eight stores are already in place and Big Fish intends to operate 8-10 large format stores of 5000-8000 square feet by the end of the year”, said Nishant Singhal who has joined Big Fish ventures as Chief Mentor.

“Big Fish venture will centrally manage key business processes like design, supply chain, logistics and quality control to optimise costs, he added.”

To address the issue of shortage of skilled manpower, biggest issue that mar the industry Big Fish ventures will employ and train 5000 professionals in various aspects of the job.

Tiwari said, “Dearth of skilled manpower is the biggest issue faced by our industry. We will set up Big Fish Academy to address this challenge and train team of 5000 professionals like Outlet managers, servicing staff, bar tenders and chefs”.

Big Fish ventures currently employs 500 employees. Big Fish will also bring all its outlets on a mobile application to provide seamless booking and payment experience to customers.