Every big venture capitalist in India had a reason why Petpooja shouldn't work. Wrong customers, wrong sector, and probably wrong city.

Yet last New Year's Eve, as restaurants across India rushed to serve their last meals of 2024, the 13-year-old company quietly hit a milestone that would turn heads even in the glitziest of venture capital offices.

“We handled 7.3 million orders that day, up from our daily average of 5.5 million to 6 million,” says Co-Founder and CEO Parthiv Patel with the relaxed confidence of someone who has heard too many times why his business shouldn't work. The previous New Year's Eve (2023), its numbers stood at 4.8 million orders. "In terms of website traffic," he adds matter-of-factly, "I guess only GST and IRCTC are ahead of us."

The market nobody wanted

Petpooja's strategy defies conventional startup wisdom.

Founded by Parthiv Patel and Apurv Patel in 2011, the company has bet everything on what most would consider the riskiest segment in Indian SaaS: small restaurants. These aren't the fancy establishments with deep pockets—they're the family-run eateries and small chains operating on thin margins, typically earning between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 5 crore annually. This is in contrast to the bigger players—including quick service restaurants (QSRs), franchisees, and fine dining—that generate revenues starting from Rs 10 crore and ranging into several hundred crore annually.