VIJAYAWADA: With digitization increasing becoming the norm across various sectors of the economy, the home delivery of food has also being finding traction.The next step in the evolution of food delivery, and possibly, other items to households, is “reverse auctioning” of food, according to Arvind Prabhakar, CEO of GyFTR (pronounced as “gifter”).“The company launched the reverse auctioning service for restaurants in Taiwan. We are testing the service in India, in New Delhi, in association with some fast-fast restaurants and bakeries,” Prabhakar, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, said on Thursday.Reverse auctioning, he said, was when restaurants offer their products at a discounted rate to reduce its inventory of the food that has a shelf-life of a few hours. “For example, if a bakery has a stock of croissants or pastries that have remained unsold through the day, the bakery can put the inventory up for reverse auctioning. The bakery can slash the prices of the croissants and pastries and other items to move the inventory, to cover its overheads,” Prabhakar told ToI.According to Prabhakar—who founded GyFTR in 2012 after working for several years in the company rewards and redemption sector for many years—the reverse auctioning of food had been successful in Taiwan. “While India has a large number of mobile phone users, with the deployment of smart phones growing at a healthy clip, we need a robust networking with banks and payment services . I think secure networking is growing more robust by the day. We hope to launch the reverse auctioning service in India, beginning in New Delhi by early next year,” Prabhakar said. “I think that the reverse auctioning can be extended to other items of daily use as well in due course.The GyFTR head said that the company had been cash-flow positive since the third year of its operation in India. “GyFTR posted revenues of Rs. 500 in FY 2017-18. The company has 65 employees in India, and is headquartered in Singapore. We offer our loyalty redemption services in Thailand and Indonesia, apart from India,” he said.Prabhakar said that the New Delhi-based GyFTR had recently won the contract to manage the loyalty redemption programme of Bharat Petroleum Corp. “We are managing the programme for BPCL, under which the fuel marketing company offers various rewards to its customers at its petrol stations. Because of digitalization, BPCL customers get instant redemption of their loyalty points by either getting a discount on their fuel bill or through coupons at premium brand outlets. We manage the redemption of points at well-known brand outlets,” he said.

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