"Our solutions are built with empathy at heart. Whatever we do, we make sure it improves peoples’ lives and impacts them in a positive manner.”

India hosts a diverse food culture, with every region having its own special cuisine. Although Indians have always preferred a home-cooked meal over eating out, the scenario is changing nowadays.

The influence of the western culture, more women joining the workforce and increased income are factors that the restaurant industry in India has grown multifold in the past decade. .

From high-end fine dining restaurant chains to street-side stalls, the Indian restaurant industry is highly diverse. However, even with such diversity, the industry is extremely unorganised. There is a massive gap between what is needed and what is available.

With no proper system to manage all the processes of a restaurant, even high-end restaurants have to struggle with mediocre point-of-sale systems. At a time when digitalisation has revolutionised every industry, the Indian restaurant industry is still managing with piecemeal solutions.

Understanding the gap in the industry, Explorex Technologies is working towards revolutionising the hospitality industry by utilising technology and providing the industry with tools that not only improve their bottom-line efficiency and increase their topline but help run businesses better. Leveraging a full-stack operating system, Explorex is helping streamline the operations of restaurants.

In the past decade, the restaurant industry in India has undergone an immense transformation. There was a time when ordering food or eating out was a concept in tier-1 and tier-2 cities. Restaurant websites and online food delivery apps revolutionised how the Indian population perceives eating out.

However, even with such growth in the industry, it is extremely lacking in terms of technology. The restaurants have to work with multiple technologies to manage their entire operations. The complexity and expensiveness of the system often cause hindrances in the working of restaurants.

Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan founded Explorex in 2020, an integrated digital platform to make the entire operations of a restaurant seamless.

An organisation founded with empathy at heart, Explorex envisions itself as a beyond software company, which in addition to disrupting the F&B industry with its full-stack solution, wants to empower business owners to nurture their dream with care.

At Explorex, they are not just building a software tool but are dedicated to crafting an ecosystem for the restaurant industry like never before.

The team at Explorex is working towards empowering restaurants to drive operational, financial and customer excellence to redefine the restaurant experience.

With a range of dynamic solutions, business owners can eliminate the hassle of approaching different solution providers for each necessity and thus manage their restaurant in an easy and streamlined manner across multiple locations. Explorex is bringing about a digital revolution, the likes of which have not been seen before and are fast spreading across the country.

Bridge- the platform by Explorex is an ecosystem of tools that streamline a restaurant’s entire operation, assisting the restaurant’s management team.

The platform includes integrated POS/mPOS solutions, web-based digital menus, automated ordering, inventory management, integrated payment solutions, customer re-engagement and recognition tools, detailed analytics and reports, as well as delivery services.

With a presence across 15+ cities, Explorex is backed by YCombinator, Pioneer Fund and HOF Capital, to name a few, and is fast becoming one of the leading players in the industry. With no other company providing such a holistic ecosystem, Explorex is set to become a dominant company nationwide with a fast-expanding team.

The idea to set up Explorex was coined in 2017 when two friends from IIT Kharagpur, Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan, were toying with a couple of start-up ideas. When they came across the immense challenges of running a restaurant, this inspired them to figure out a solution to help restaurants out.

In the coming months, they worked closely with restaurant owners and staff on the ground level and realized how dissatisfied the restaurant industry was with the current point-of-sale systems. Restaurants desperately needed a solution partner that could truly understand them.

Owing to this need, Explorex was founded in 2020 and as Mainak Sarkar, co-founder and CEO of Exploex, puts it, Explorex technologies is a ‘beyond software’ company. They are working towards providing software solutions to the ever-changing restaurant industry and creating an ecosystem that is flexible enough to adapt to fast-changing times.

Explorex Technologies Pvt Ltd was co-founded by Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan. Mainak Sarkar is the co-founder and CEO, and Pritam Khan is the co-founder and CTO at Explorex Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Apart from Mainak and Pritam, Raj Kumar (COO), Aritra Basu (VP of Product), and Manish Agarwal (AVP Operations) are the key personnel who are behind the success and growth of Explorex Technologies.

Entrepreneurship is not easy, especially in the initial phases, with extreme lows and highs at times. Mainak shares, “In our initial days, there were several chal - lenges that we faced. Getting the first ten people was the most difficult part of our entire journey.

Building a team of people who are aligned with your vision and are committed to the core values of the company is extremely difficult. Moving further, since our product is not something people in the industry have seen before in terms of an end-to-end solution, they were sceptical.”

The journey has not been easy for the team of Explorex, but with perseverance, they managed to overcome every hurdle they met along the way. Pritam says, “It was a learning experience. As a result of overcoming these initial hurdles, we now know exactly the kind of people we are looking for in our team and what the restaurant owners and staff really require.”

The pandemic has been a difficult time for the entire community. In the initial days, the team of Explorex too was affected as the entire nation went under lockdown.

But the post-pandemic phase turned out to be highly beneficial for Explorex in terms of business. The waves of digitisation in the Indian SME space became huge and thus created an opportunity for Mainak and Pritam to disrupt the industry for a positive change.

For the Explorex founders, the idea of success is building a product that brings immense value to its customers and every person associated with it. It is the vision of transforming the future of the restaurant industry that drives their motivation.

In Mainak’s words, “We believe we have succeeded when we become an integral part of the industry and can help the industry break out from the shackles of a decade of no serious innovation or technology that has plagued this industry.”

There is no better achievement for a business than highly satisfied clients. Mainak shares, “The achievement for Explorex lies in the satisfaction of our clients. We feel extremely proud when the staff of a restaurant tells us how much better their lives have become and how they can now enjoy their work and serve people better.”

A testament to having satisfied clients is the churn stands at zero for Explorex, with their referrals being incredibly high. Pritam adds, “This only happens when the users of your product love you so much that they go above and beyond to tell their peers about you.”

According to Mainak, Explorex is more than just a software company, building tools for the restaurant industry. He says, “While we do build better tools than most alternatives available today. But, it’s only possible because, at the very core of it, we are a company with empathy at heart. Our approach to building products always ensures that apart from getting the job done, it needs to be done in such a way that it creates a positive impact on the user’s life, be it a waiter, a cashier, a manager, or an end customer.”

At Explorex, they have a people-first approach to solving any problems. Mainak and Pritam are building a company which has core values like empathy, passion, care and experience.

Prioritising their client satisfaction, Explorex’s major strategy is to build a strong feedback loop for any work that they do. Pritam explains, “Feedback from the clients, positive or negative, helps us realise the direction we are heading.”

Mainak and Pritam envision a future where working at a restaurant is no longer a thankless job, where employees love their job and enjoy serving guests with the best customer experience. Customer expectations are not only matched but exceeded.

Mainak says, “We want a future where if someone wants to open a restaurant, they should just reach out to Explorex, and everything will be taken care of. Explorex will become an integral part of the restaurant industry. We will be the mandatory solution for every restaurant.”

Explorex has been gaining popularity, and the number of its clients is increasing with each passing day. Pritam shares that they are getting the best kind of marketing there is- ‘word-of-mouth marketing, which helps them build trust, loyalty and credibility among their customers. With the kind of referrals Explorex is getting, the founders are sure they are going to reach the status they are looking for in the next five years.

Both Mainak and Pritam are avid believers in giving back to the community. As a part of giving back, they are regulars at local start-up events to share knowledge and connect with young founders and help them as often as they can.

Being entrepreneurs themselves, both Mainak and Pritam correlate with young entrepreneurs. Sharing his words of advice for young entrepreneurs, Mainak says, "Ideate, Validate, then build. Be your biggest critic, and never fall in love with your idea. Remove all biases and take in critical feedback, that way, you will know that the solution you are building will actually solve a pain point for a set of users.”