Discussion Notes

Discussion Notes

The most highly successful restaurant reservation service in the Asia Pacific

Region is Eat2Eat .com , which is the brain child of founder owner Vikram Agarwal

The internet portal launched in 2001 , was a perfect online guide to the best eating places in the Asia Pacific Region , and provided online reservation for varied restaurants

He negotiated with restaurants and along with registered customers placed the details on the website

The listed restaurants were in major cities of Asia Pacific Region . At the end of 2005 there were 823

restaurants and 11859 registered users

The revenue from advertising opportunities to restaurants wanting more publicity was a major share of its Agarwal negotiated with credit card companies for their cards to be used by clients on his portal

Agarwal traveled to all the cities to negotiate with restaurant owners and wrote restaurant reviews on the portal himself , gathered data and conducted research for potential expansion

Agarwal understood corporate clients were more profitable for his business

However Agarwal realized , to succeed further he should tap the individual clients and partner with other companies to expand his business

To tap personal business he increased the role of credit card companies for making individual payments convenient

In May 2004 Eat2Eat partnered for a publicity campaign with The Asian Walstreet Journal and got a boost in publicity

Gradually Agarwal realized that to expand he must raise capital

However having failed to raise from banks , public stock offerings venture capitalist , and other internet restaurant companies , Agarwal did not give up and decided that soon he will have to somehow find a way to expand

It is evident that the strategies used by Agarwal to run his business and to make a plan for

expansion to survive the competition are in keeping with a well thought proactive

strategy to expand business and to achieve profitability . However the nature of the

business is not conducive to enjoying the liberalism of today 's business environment in

view of the fact that portals and websites are not a sought after clientele to do business

with in view of the uncertainty of identity...