Kea, a California based startup that provides restaurants with the opportunity to upgrade their method of taking orders over phone, has secured US$ 10 million Series A funding in a round led by Marbruck on 20th November 2020.
The round also included participation from other investors Xfund, Heartland Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, Barrel Ventures, DEEPCORE and AVG Funds. Angel investors Craig Flom from the Panera Bread founding team, Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jonathan Kelly, Five Guys Franchise and Tony Lam, Wingstop franchise also participated.
Kea empowers the restaurants for operating in a more intelligent manner by maintaining better relationships with the customers. The idea of an automatic voice assistant mostly brings unpleasant experiences like that of calling a bank or a customer care service. Kea artificial intelligence differs by focusing singularly on restaurant ordering. They are already one of the fastest growing companies which are changing the operating behavior of restaurants. Around 250 restaurants already use their service including Primanti Brothers, Donatos and Papa John’s. It helps in saving average hours of labor in a week, with increase in sales by 23%. The impact of Kea brings 64% of more satisfied customers and 18% increased savings. With the newly received investment they are going to bring the artificial intelligence assistant Kea to 1000 restaurants in 37 States by 2021.
Adam Ahmad, the founder, CEO of Kea said, “The restaurants mostly have less staff so it is really unlikely that they can have someone who can devote their time to answering the phone. Most of the people experienced being placed on hold when we called a restaurant. And at the same time he said that it is one of the important ordering channels and especially during this pandemic time as delivery and take out have become one of the important revenue sources of restaurants. So, Kea offers a technology that can help restaurants to manage more orders over the phone. They call it a “virtual cashier”, which can do the initial work with the customers and process routine orders and can involve human interaction when needed.”
About Kea
Kea is based in Mountain View, San Francisco Bay Area and was founded by Adam Ahmad and Arjun Vasan in 2018. They are building a team of people who are excited about the mission of driving global commerce by helping restaurants to operate intelligently. They have created partnerships with some renowned restaurants like Domino’s; Five Guys and are in the process of scaling. The very first product offered by the platform, Kea voice takes orders over the phone efficiently and consistently so that restaurants can focus more on making food than taking orders.
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