Attention foodies: Three KU graduates launch mobile application to rate food
KARACHI: The passion to bring something new for food lovers and to step up in the world of entrepreneurship motivated three university classmates to develop a mobile application called Top5, to rate and review the services of restaurants.
“We had our own firm before we graduated from university in December 2016,” said Saad Umar, who is the CEO of Edgeon Solutions, which was initially a service providing software firm. With the similar dream to start a venture of their own, the three class fellows of Umaer Basha Institute of Information Technology at Karachi University, became good friends when they socialised at an annual dinner of the department.
Umar and his partner, Osama Noor, who is the chief technical officer of Edgeon, used to work together in a company back in 2015, before they established Edgeon. Talking about the idea behind forming the Top5 application, Umar said he once met Noor for dinner at a restaurant where he (Umar) recommended him to try some of the food he likes. “[That is when] I came up with the idea to make an application to rate food because I would have tried some other food if I had more recommendations or reviews of that particular restaurant,” Noor said.
Another friend of Umar, Saad Qadeer, who is the managing director of Edgeon, was running a small company that failed to operate. He eventually joined Umar in his venture. “Initially, we were doing freelancing through Edgeon and taking up projects,” said Qadeer. “However, we wanted to do something different.”
Their company was working since 2015, but it was in October 2016 when they decided to work on Top5 application. Umar called Qadeer to stop all their freelancing work and start working on the idea of developing Top5. “We all believed in each other and after working day and night on the idea with a team of 10 people, including web developers, the application was launched on March 12 this year,” Qadeer said.
How Top5 works?
People usually read reviews before trying food at any new restaurant, Qadeer said. The users of Top5 can rate restaurants and write reviews about their services and food for other people to see through the application.
“Through this application, we are trying to help restaurant owners and customers,” he said. Qadeer believes that one bad review published on Facebook can bring down the business of any restaurant. However, Top5 gives detailed reviews along with the justification of any negative or positive comment.
“We will eventually train the Top5 users of the application to write reviews for the application,” Noor said, adding that they will be supervising all those who will be writing reviews.
To use the application, which is only available for android users for now, one has to register to check-in at any restaurant or to review and rate their food and services. The newsfeed of the application can be viewed without registering. One can also search for restaurants just by searching for any particular cuisine or dish.
The application has three main sections – review, add business and wallet. “One can add business as a customer to rate any food chains or restaurants that are not registered with the Top5,” Noor said. He added that their team looks through the reviews and adds restaurants that are not registered with them to the list.
Currently, they have more than 20 restaurants on board and within six months they plan to launch three other sections of lifestyle, health and travel in their application. The application’s IOS version will be launched within a month.
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