Sunday 11 / May / 2025
Kochi: If you are travelling to Kerala for the first time and have no clue of the restaurants located in the area near you, then you need not worry. Just download this food app – TastySpots and you will get the best of Kerala’s cuisine on one platform! Do you know where you will get the best fish pickle in Kerala? Or which restaurants offer Karimeen pollichathu and Duck mappas? It’s all available on TasteSpots.
The app that’s just over three months old has been downloaded over 200,000 times and it’s developer, Kochi-based TastySpots Infoway, was recently awarded the best start-up at TiECon 2016.
“The idea came to me in 2009 when I used to live as a bachelor in Kochi. For me, it was a challenge to spot the best restaurants in Kochi then. That’s when I thought to create a website but it was not easy to develop one. It took time and finally we decided to come out with an app,” said Abdul Manaf, CEO of TastySpots, the brain behind this app.
“You know in Kumbalam, which is on the outskirts of Kochi, there is a joint, known locally as Puttu Kada. Not many know about this place but is quite popular among foodies and it was Malayalam film actor Asif Ali, who told me about this joint. There are hundreds of small-joints like these in Kerala and our plan is to take these places beyond word-of-mouth publicity and instead make it known to all through this app,” said Manaf who is also a popular social media entrepreneur.
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The app was developed as a collaboration among Cat Entertainments, Kerala’s first media start-up, programming specialists Sayone Technologies and Manaf’s own company, Easysoft Technologies, which is into IT solutions. “I co-founded the company along with my friends Amarnath Sankar, K.M. Mehboob, Chachu Jacob, Real Prad and Shamal,” he said.
“TastySpots is not just a free-listing of restaurants. We carefully curate the content that appears on the app and choose restaurants that has a reputation for quality. This is done after a lot of research by our team,” Manaf explained.
Facebook appreciation
Meanwhile, TastySpots, has been selected for the prestigious FbStart, a global start-up accelerator program promoted by Facebook. As part of the programme, TasySpots has received around $80,000 (nearly Rs 52 lakh) as credits and services from Facebook and its partners. “In an email send to us by Facebook, it said our app has been selected for its impressive development and its potential for continued growth,” Manaf said.
Currently, the app has included 400 restaurants in Kerala and each restaurant is featured with maximum information including a 90-second video. The app is available in Android, iOS, and the web. “We are now in the process of expanding our horizons to other places such as Bangalore, Chennai, Dubai and even Muscat too,” Manaf added.
