Flyers in a rush at the Calcutta airport can pick up their favoured cravings right at the boarding gate, with Bangalore-based start-up Grabbngo planning to start their operations here by the end of this month.

The start-up founded by two former investment bankers who met at the Deutsche Bank group — Santosh Pericharan and Gaurav Gutgutia — is currently offering the services at the Delhi and Mumbai airports.

“Bangalore is expected to go live soon and Calcutta, Goa and Chennai in November. We should be able to go live across these airports through kiosks and apps,” said Gaurav Gutgutia, co-founder and COO of Grabbngo.

He said Grabbngo has tied up with master franchisees — Lite Bite Foods, Travel Food Services, Devyani and HMSHost — covering 80-90 per cent of the eateries at the airport.

Three services are on the plate of the start-up — express dine-in, express pick-up and get it delivered at boarding. “The underlying feature is multi-orders from different brands,” Gutgutia said.

Gutgutia and Pericharan had originally developed the technology for drive- through restaurants, where users can pick up the food without leaving their cars.

“We built a drive-through platform and tied up with partners, big chains and local chains in Bangalore. We went live in 2016 and had 350 stores covering food and grocery,” Gutgutia said.

But with high discounts and investments burning up, the founders started looking at alternatives.

Strong demand

Gutgutia said the company has seen a steady rise in demand since introducing the model at both the airports.

“The average order size was around Rs 300. With multi order, it has gone up to around Rs 420. In Delhi, we are close to 500 orders a day and in Mumbai around 100 orders a day as we have just started. By this year end, we should be at least doing 5,000-7,000 orders a day from seven airports,” he said.