“In India, dining out is an event, smallest of things can ruin it, and smallest of things can make it better”– Ankit Mehrotra

Ankit’s tryst with entrepreneurship got ignited when he overcame his fear of failing an exam. The boy who grew in the bylanes South Delhi went to the University of Essex to pursue his engineering, chased his love for finance to got a CFA charter and did odd jobs to survive, before he became a successful investment banker.

And then he quit it all and came back to India to start Dine Out with two of his childhood best friends.

Today, Dine Out is one of India’s largest Dining and Restaurant Tech platforms that processes more than 100M diners and $800mn worth of transactions across its network of 50,000 partner restaurants in 20 cities.

In this episode of Founder Thesis, Ankit talks about being a young professional during the 2008 recession, conceptualising Dine Out, starting out, his acquisitions and creating an ecosystem for the food industry in India

The key takeaways are…

• How do you take an idea from concept to business
• What common mistakes that start-ups typically make
• How you to keep yourself focused on the vision with which you started
• What does it take to understand the niche that you operate in
• How do you create new avenues within your industry