When Shiva Srinivasan founded online ordering startup Zuppler nearly five years ago, he wanted it to be the next GrubHub or Seamless.
He quickly realized that he could have better success offering restaurants a platform to create their own online ordering sites. That’s why, one year after founding the company, Srinivasan pivoted.
Zuppler now serves 4,500 restaurants around the world, Srinivasan said. The restaurants use the platform customize their own online menus and ordering systems and use Zuppler’s app to process orders.
About 4,000 hotels in the U.S. also use Zuppler for room service, he said. Zuppler partners with Choice Hotels to offer a main website for ordering, but other hotels use Zuppler to create their own online menus.
Zuppler was the first tenant of Mike Krupit’s Langhorne incubator Novotorium, which has since shifted its focus to health and wellness businesses.
The company has 52 employees, including six in Philly and others in India and Eastern Europe. Zuppler has a meeting room in Center City but no Philadelphia office, though Srinivasan said that as the company grows its Philly staff in the next few months, he’ll be looking for a permanent space.
On the horizon is Zuppler’s web 3.0 version, which is built for mobile and optimized for PC, Srinivasan said.
Srinivasan, 39, lives in Phoenixville. He was previously an IT consultant for companies like CVS and TV Guide.
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