Tech Pitch: Ordoo

Company name: Ordoo
Founder: Tom Dewhurst (24)
Background: Business administration At Bath University, technology consulting at Accenture
Based in: Old Street, London
Launched: 2015

Very simply, what does your tech start-up do?

• Ordoo saves busy people time when collecting food and drink. You can order ahead on the app at cafes, coffee shops, lunch spots and bars to beat the queue and earn loyalty rewards.
• Through mobile ordering, we enable our partner venues to understand and engage their customers so they come back more frequently and bring their friends.
• We develop affinity.

Tell us why there’s a need – what do you disrupt?

Ordoo is helping to shift the way people order food and drink to mobile. We’ve all been stuck at the back of a queue on a busy day and wished we didn’t have to wait around. Time is our most valuable resource, it’s finite. Studies show that we can waste up to a year of our lives waiting around for food and drink! In our fast-paced lives, we’re providing a solution to improve convenience.

From our partner venues’ perspectives, when customers pay via cash or card the venue gains no information about them. If customers order via their smartphone, we can build up customer-centric data on the venue’s behalf, such as order frequency, time since last order and favourite items. This information is vital for them to improve their business by identifying, recognising and rewarding loyal customers.

Is Ordoo funded?

Yes, we received seed funding back in spring 2016 and have recently secured additional funding led by Langton Capital.

What were you doing before you started Ordoo?

I’ve always had lots of business ideas, and creating new products that people want to use excites me! When I was a teenager I started a project selling child identification cards to parents so they could react effectively to their child going missing. I thought there was a big opportunity in the UK, since over 16 million were being sold in the US. I learnt a lot about routes to market and product positioning from this endeavor.

Stints at Vodafone and Accenture confirmed that I wasn’t a fan of the corporate world. Luckily, I recognised the opportunity to build an app that would save people time in my final year at Bath. Ordoo has been a rollercoaster since then – we’ve been through three names (Ordo, Ordable and Ordoo) and four cities. So far, I’ve not looked back.

What’s the best thing about being based in London?

I originally launched Ordoo back in Bath, as I had some support for office space and angel investor connections. We then launched in Bristol as it was a bigger market and we were invited to join Bristol’s Entrepreneurial Spark programme.

Following that success we were keen to tackle London and go head-to-head with a competitor. We now work from various co-working spaces and coffee shops around Old Street, lapping up the free Ordoo coffee! Old Street is a great place to build a start-up and there is a definite buzz around new technology here. We’ve settled in and are looking to take over the rest of London and the UK very soon…

Keen to launch your start-up in the capital? Check out our free guides to starting a business in London.