Liven acquires four startups for $152 million in hope of becoming hospitality’s one-stop-tech-shop

Left to right: Liven founder and co-CEO Shahrooz Chowdhury, co-founder and chief strategy officer Grace Wong, co-founder and CEO William Wong. Source: Supplied

Australian hospitality tech platform Liven has revealed $152 million in local and international startup acquisitions, in a move it claims will bolster its all-in-one offering to restaurants, pubs, and growing franchises.

The Melbourne-based company on Tuesday revealed it has scooped up domestic players OrderUp, an online ordering platform, and Abacus, which focuses on point-of-sale terminals and self-service kiosks.

Additionally, Liven has acquired Singaporean restaurant kitchen ordering system Zeemart, and venue performance management system Copper, which is based in the United States’ tech mecca Silicon Valley.

The additions will grow a system used at more than 6,000 venues worldwide, across local franchises like Krispy Kreme, Sushi Hub, Din Tai Fung, and Roll’d.

Liven has already grown to offer restaurants payment processing services, POS systems, and self-service kiosks, through to delivery and inventory management, stock procurement tools, and marketing automation.

It also offers hospitality engagement tools to partner restaurants, including food vouchers and diner rewards that can be redeemed at participating venues.

The latest additions will strengthen what founder and co-CEO Shahrooz Chowdhury calls an all-in-one tech stack for restaurants.

Speaking to SmartCompany, Chowdhury said the business has focused on “vertical” acquisitions, enabling restaurant user experiences that are not possible by tying a number of separate hospitality software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers together.

“It doesn’t matter how big you are or how small you are, you have the same challenge,” Chowdhury said.

“Your challenge is, ‘How do you stitch together up to 20 SaaS companies into your stack?’

“And in a perfect world you would pick your best operators in every field, and just have them magically have them work together.

“The reality is, restaurateurs never got into business to do that.”

The fresh integrations will help Liven’s partner restaurants cut out “endless manual processing and tunnel vision” when shifting data across various platforms, he added.

Liven “relentless” outside of the spotlight, co-CEO claims

While Australian hospitality tech platforms like Mr Yum have largely built their platforms in the spotlight, Liven has taken a somewhat different approach.

Founded in 2014, Liven enjoyed significant media attention in 2017 when it raised $10 million in venture capital, and again in 2019 when it raised $14.2 million by selling digital tokens redeemable on its diner rewards platform.

Yet the company was mostly quiet through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its brand awareness efforts have increased in recent months, as players in the hospitality sector consider efficiency upgrades and cost-cutting measures.

In a statement, Grace Wong, founder and chief strategy officer, said Liven has been busy “quietly building one of Australia’s fastest-growing SaaS technology start-ups”.

Without commenting on the practices of other hospitality startups, Chowdhury said Liven has worked with a “relentless, maniacal” focus on its product offering.

“We also acknowledge that traditionally, customers would beat their chests at every acquisition along the way,” he added.

“We kind of make sure that we’re very confident in our ability to execute, actually solve the pain points” before fronting the media, he continued.

Notably, Liven entered the headlines just weeks ago when Melbourne’s Calia restaurant chain, now in administration, pointed diners to the hospitality startup for refunds on unspent dining credits.

Liven itself states responsibility for those diners ultimately rests with the administrators themselves, but has pledged to provide alternate dining credits to affected diners.

The restaurant’s administration is not material to Liven’s operations itself, a spokesperson claimed.

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