Ordermark U.S. business sold to Indian software company in wake of Nextbite layoffsOrdermark U.S. business sold to Indian software company in wake of Nextbite layoffs

Joanna Fantozzi

UrbanPiper, a leading restaurant industry software platform in India, has purchased the U.S. business segment of Ordermark, the technology arm of virtual restaurant company, Nextbite, Nation’s Restaurant News has learned in an exclusive story.  

The news comes a few weeks after Nextbite abruptly laid off an unknown number of employees in May for the third time in 14 months. During the most recent round of layoffs at Nextbite, former Red Robin CEO Denny Marie Post — who made headlines in 2022 when she joined the company as an advisor and then later co-president in 2022 — was one of dozens who left the company.

Nextbite was churning out restaurant partnerships as recently as April, when the company announced deals with Nathan’s Famous, Killer Brownie, and Shawarmama – the latter of which was Nextbite’s first international partnership.

“We’ve worked hard over the past six years to meet the needs of restaurants adapting to online ordering and changing consumer demands,” Alex Canter, cofounder and former CEO of Ordermark, and current CEO of Nextbite, 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.”

Ordermark was founded in 2017 as one of the first companies to conceive of a software solution for restaurants to manage online orders and avoid using multiple tablets from different online ordering companies. Nextbite was originally formed as a virtual restaurant arm of Ordermark. In Oct. 2020, Ordermark raised $120 million in Series C funding led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. Shortly thereafter, Nextbite and Ordermark merged, and by 2021, the company had completely rebranded as Nextbite. 

Over the past six years, Ordermark has grown its customer base to thousands of independent restaurants, as well as mid-sized and some large chains, and has been processing 30 million transactions annually, culminating in $1 billion in gross annual value. The platform is currently integrated with more than 30 third-party delivery platforms.  

Ordermark’s new owners are based out of Bengaluru, India and is one of the leading SaaS platforms for restaurants in the country, offering workflow automation solutions and integrations across multiple online delivery platforms, and features such as analytics, dashboards, and marketing automation to customers in multiple markets internationally.  

“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. “We’re also thrilled to welcome Ordermark CTO Arpan Desai, plus a substantial portion of Ordermark’s product/engineering team onboard, to launch and scale our North American plans.”

There are no further details available on what will happen to Nextbite’s leadership or virtual brands following the sale of Ordermark’s U.S. business to UrbanPiper.

Contact Joanna at [email protected]