Three Ex-Rocket Internet CEOs Launch Qraved Restaurant Directory

Former Rocket Internet executives Adrian Li, Steven Kim and Sean Liao today announced the launch of their newest startup, an online restaurant directory named Qraved. The three co-founders were previously known through their roles at Zalora , OfficeFab and Wimdu in several countries in Asia. Although the founding team has not officially announced their investor list, they do state that the US VC 500startup is also involved in Qraved.

The three founders see strong demand in the lifestyle sector, particularly in the culinary segment, "with more than 2000 restaurants listed and thousands of photos, Qraved wants to help foodies find the right place to eat the best food". Qraved focus on the social side of this activity by providing high quality photos, guiding users to find new restaurants, viewing reviews from bloggers and of course looking at menus to help users determine which restaurant to choose.

Of course, this kind of application has been made and tried in Indonesia, several startups such as Urbanesia, Isikota, Tasterous and others, but one of the features that makes Qraved different is its ability to make reservations directly to restaurants online. "We noticed that a lot of our friends were uploading photos of their food to Facebook and getting lots of Likes. So we thought, what if we build a product that combines this feature with online restaurant bookings/reservations?" says Sean who leads product development at Qraved.

"We are the first to try to combine the concept of sharing food photos and online booking for restaurants," said founder Adrian Li who handles Marketing and User Engagement.

Qraved has been launched in Jakarta as of today and will soon expand to Bali and Surabaya. Qraved intends to enter other markets outside of Indonesia next year. The founders think that the Indonesian market is very social, loves photos and balanced with the fast growth of the culinary industry, it makes sense for Qraved to start from Indonesia.

One startup, Tasterous, had tried its luck in the industry with a similar concept a few years ago, and while their product was well executed, the marketing and user acquisition concept didn't pan out, forcing them to go out of business shortly after launch.

Qraved has a slightly better concept, and the reservation feature is one of the key features, and it's run by a group of founders with amazing backgrounds, it looks like there's a huge possibility for Qraved to be popular in Indonesia.