Pocketin raised a seed round of US$150,000 from Hong Kong-based VC firm Swastika in February 2016

OneLoyalCard.com, a Delhi-based restaurant reservation and deals platform, has acqui-hired Pocketin, a year-old startup operating in the same space.

With this deal, the entire team at Pocketin, along with its founders, will join OneLoyalCard.

This move will help strengthen OneLoyalCard’s technology and quicken its expansion plans across major markets in India. “Both the companies are already moving aggressively and together. I believe we will consolidate our position in India’s booming restaurant deals market, and this move will help us compete with bigger players like Dineout and EazyDiner in Southeast Asia,”  Pocketin Co-founder Aniruddha Mondal said.

OneLoyalcard was started in July 2015 by Arpit Aggarwal, Vaibhav Garg and Sahil Mendiratta — all Chartered Accountants, with a vision to enhance diners’ experience and to provide a marketing solution to restaurants. Currently, OneLoyalCard provides 2,000-plus deals at over 500 restaurants in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad. Customers can use OneLoyalCard’s website or app to explore restaurants, book table, buy deals or organise parties.

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The restaurant industry today is worth over INR 114 billion (US$17 billion) and is growing at a tremendous pace amid renewed interest, especially from multinational chains. Particularly, in the last six months the metro cities have seen a huge surge in new restaurants being opened. New restaurants are initially able to attract customers but they eventually see decline in footfalls due to lack of customer retention and retargeting mechanisms.

OneLoyalCard plugs this loophole by providing the restaurants a ready-to-use loyalty programme. Every time diners book their table with OneLoyalCard’s website or app, they are entitled to discounts of up to 35 per cent on the bill. Additionally, diners accumulate loyalty points for exclusive use at the restaurant. Loyalty points enable diners to unlock exclusive rewards and offers at the restaurants.

OneLoyalCard is planning to be operational in six cities by the end of this year.

OneLoyalCard has recently added prepaid deals and party booking features on its website and apps. Furthermore, it plans to add event ticketing for restaurants and expansion into wellness vertical.

Pocketin was founded in 2015 by Kshitij Mehra and Mondal. It is a table reservation-cum-deals aggregation platform for restaurants with a real-time pricing engine working on a proprietary algorithm. It raised a seed round of US$150,000 from Hong Kong based VC firm, Swastika, in February 2016.

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