Leading virtual brand company Nextbite has sold its order-management technology platform, Ordermark, to UrbanPiper, a restaurant industry software platform in India.
The news comes amid recent layoffs and just ahead of the official sale of Nextbite to Sam Nazarian, founder of sbe Lifestyle Hospitality and virtual restaurant platform C3.
In an interview with Food On Demand, Alex Canter, Nextbite and Ordermark co-founder, relayed that the timely sale of Nextbite’s technology arm was intentional, as the purchasing deal with Nazarian did not include Ordermark.
Ordermark and Nextbite cofounder Alex Canter
Founded in 2017, Ordermark was one of the first aggregators of online restaurant delivery orders, enabling restaurants to consolidate digital orders from third-party delivery providers into a single dashboard or printer.
In 2020, the startup inked $120 million in Series C funding led by SoftBank. In 2021, Nexbite was launched as the virtual brand extension to Ordermark.
Ordermark is integrated with more than 30 third-party delivery platforms including DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, and UberEats, and processes over 30 million transactions annually, amounting to $1 billion gross value yearly, according to a release.
“We’ve worked hard over the past six years to meet the needs of restaurants adapting to online ordering and changing consumer demands,” Canter said in a statement. “Along the way, we’ve gotten to know the UrbanPiper team very well, and we’re excited that they will be carrying the Ordermark brand forward, growing the platform, and supporting customers in the U.S. and beyond.”
UrbanPiper cofounder and CEO Saurabh Gupta
For UrbanPiper, the acquisition aligns with the company’s core focus. The platform helps restaurants automate workflows across online delivery platforms such as Swiggy, Zomato, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and more while offering features such as analytics, marketing, and website building to multiple international markets.
The sale will push UrbanPiper to expand in the U.S. and Canada by gaining Ordermark’s customer base of thousands of independent, mid-sized and large chains.
“We’re very excited to expand upon the world-class platform developed by Ordermark, and to grow the loyal customer base they developed, with new capabilities and extensive POS integrations,” Saurabh Gupta, cofounder and CEO of UrbanPiper, said in a statement.
To launch and scale North American plans, UrbanPiper will onboard Ordermark CTO Arpan Desai, plus a “substantial” portion of Ordermark’s product engineering team. The company currently has 250 employees.
