Dad helps bankroll son's business providing self-service technology to the hospitality sector

Monday, 3 May 2021

Nikhil Sethi (left) and Nipoon Patel, partners in Tabin, a start-up offering a kiosk self-service to hospitality businesses, are at Chicking in Mangere which is trialling a Tabin kiosk for free.

Parental backing can make a big difference not only when young people want to get on the property ladder but also when they have business aspirations.

Nipoon Patel and his business partner Nikhil Sethi are hugely grateful their parents’ financial backing is helping bankroll their start-up, Tabin, aiming to make life easier for owners of cafes, restaurants and takeaways.

Tabin is selling a kiosk service for $10 a day to small and not so small businesses in the hospitality sector.

While self-service kiosks are well-established technology all over the world and are used by banks, airports, supermarkets, petrol stations and in big fast-food chains like McDonald's, KFC, Taco Bell, Patel said many small hospitality business would benefit from the efficiency of self-service technology if they could afford it.

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Narendra Patel, owner of Whenuapai Mini Mart, and father of Nipoon Patel, believes his son’s business will do well.

“As a start-up what we believe is, they shouldn’t be costing so much, so we wanted to create a solution for that. So we spent many months on this and created something which is $10 a day. “

“We can provide the same sort of service that all of these big companies do but at a fraction of the price. We don’t see why every café, takeaway and restaurant and even bars shouldn’t be able to afford this.”

“We have had to put in a lot of money, but I think we’ve been fortunate enough to have parents who have helped us with the initial investment. As the company starts to make a profit we can obviously start paying off whatever we borrowed from them,” Patel said.

His father, Narendra Patel, had a business background, so he understood the risks of starting one and the investment required. Patel senior owns the Whenuapai Mini Mart in Auckland.

“He’s been a big motivation for me to do this,” Patel said. “Doing a start-up especially after leaving a job, it’s a tough thing, it’s a roller coaster ride. One day you’ll be really happy and the other you’ll be like wow what am I doing.”

Narendra Patel said it was difficult for start-ups to source funds when the business was young and still proving itself. He was very happy to back his son’s business.

“I know in the future his business will be very nice but right now he is struggling because it is a new business, new start-up… but still I’m happy to help him.”

Tabin is completing a free trial kiosk for global fast-food chain Chicking in Mangere which Patel and Sethi hope will lead to Tabin installing more kiosks in the half a dozen or so Chicking stores in the North Island.

It has also offered free trials to other small local restaurants and now has a half a dozen paying customers.

Tabin buys the kiosks, which come from China, designs and installs the software for the food and beverage businesses and supports the kiosks for a charge of $10 a day.

Hospitality businesses must sign up for a year at that cost. They may trial the system for $5 a day for a month to see if it works for them. If it doesn’t, Tabin takes the kiosk back.

Not surprisingly, the business idea came from a long wait in a queue to order fast food.

He and Sethi, both IT trained, worked on the idea for a year, some of that during lockdown, developing the software and getting the pilot sites going.

Patel took the big leap of quitting his job to concentrate on the business not long before Covid struck, a shock for the young entrepreneur whose target market was suddenly shut down by the pandemic.

Sethi joined him after losing his IT job at Air New Zealand, severely impacted by the impact of the pandemic and closed borders.