Enabling direct-ordering for restaurants and retailers via Blink Co.

“From what I’ve seen, any successful business is helping people in one way or another, it’s definitely adding value somewhere – or it can never become a successful business”, says Syed Sair Ali, CEO and Co-founder of Blink Co. Technologies.

Syed Sair Ali, along with Syed Hyder Abbas, the CTO and the Co-founder of Blink Co. started Eat Mubarak in 2018 as a restaurant directory, discovery and delivery platform. Since then, they have pivoted to Blink, a quick commerce solution for restaurant owners to build their own online ordering systems and apps.

Blink can be a game-changer for restaurant businesses as it allows them to build their own online ordering systems, without having to depend on a third-party aggregator to manage deliveries. Additionally, since the technology for online ordering and management under Blink is fully customisable, restaurants can get their own fully functional, branded websites and apps, powered by the Blink Co. technology without having to directly work with any software house to construct a website or app for them – both of which can be extremely time and capital intensive.

Blink is not only making online ordering and delivery easier and accessible for restaurants but is also initiating a conversation around the evolution of e-commerce in Pakistan into quick commerce, which would mean that not only restaurants, but any brick and mortar business that wants to sell online, will be able to use their services and their technology portal to reach its consumers with far more efficiency than could be otherwise made possible with the older e-commerce solutions.

Quick commerce enablement will mean more entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses including restaurants and retail outlets will be able to meet the growing customer demands for instant deliveries, by optimizing the time for order fulfillment providing efficiency and ease.

Sair and Hyder’s vision for Blink is about the question of how they can convert all brick and mortar businesses into quick commerce powerhouses with the focus on making things easier and more efficient for people – both for customers and vendors. There are not many businesses that consider the vendor’s position but Blink positions itself differently, in that it places merchants and vendors ease first. By forgoing a 30% to 35% profit commission from vendors, a model that most other aggregators work along, Blink has instead established its business model on helping merchants, whereby it provides its tech portal for restaurants and other retailers to manage their own deliveries as part of its engagement suite, alongside its analytics and marketing tools to help businesses reach, retain and connect with their customers with ease.

In addition, Blink also provides clients with a last-mile logistics solution, to allow restaurants and retail stores to make use of its fleet of riders to manage and ensure efficient deliveries as part of its end-to-end online ordering experience.

While many Pakistani businesses have made a successful transition to e-commerce, Sair and Hyder realise that the next step for businesses is quick commerce where orders can be delivered in the matter of hours and minutes instead of days. They believe that faster order fulfilment would translate into higher customer satisfaction and that will in turn result in more business and hyper-growth for these businesses.

Watch our full conversation with Blink Co. founders, Syed Sair Ali and Syed Hyder Abbas to find out how they set up Blink and their views on how they are disrupting traditional means of going digital in the present-day Pakistani quick commerce landscape.

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