About WAO

Restaurants should
own their customers.

WAO exists to make that the default, not the exception.

Restaurants are working harder than ever and keeping less. Delivery apps made it easy to be found, and quietly took the customer relationship in exchange. The commission says 30% on paper. After platform marketing and hidden fees it's closer to 40–50%, and the restaurant still never gets the customer's number.

We looked at this and saw a simple thing: restaurants don't have a customer acquisition problem. They have a customer ownership problem. The people who already love a restaurant are paying a toll to reach it, and every repeat order routes through a platform that won't share the data back.

So we built the alternative. Restaurants take orders on their own WhatsApp number, under their own brand, and keep every customer they earn. Flat monthly fee. Zero commission. The diner never sees us.

What we believe

Three rules we built the company on.

You own your customers.

Every name, number, and order lives in a database that's yours. We operate it for you. We never sell it.

Flat fee, never a cut.

Our revenue doesn't grow when your commission bill does. We're paid to reduce your dependency on platforms, not deepen it.

Simple beats clever.

No dashboard to learn, no hardware to buy. If it adds work to your day, we haven't finished building it.

The founders

Two people.
One belief.

Kshitij Grover, co-founder of WAO
Kshitij Grover
Co-founder · Growth & Partnerships

Kshitij loves restaurants: the owner who knows every regular by name, the dish a whole neighbourhood comes back for. He spent five years in sales learning to walk in, listen, and earn trust, and that's what he does at WAO, one restaurant at a time. He's here because no restaurant should have to pay a platform to reach the customers it already won.

LinkedIn
Madhav Kapoor, co-founder of WAO
Madhav Kapoor
Co-founder · Product & Engineering

Madhav believes the best restaurants deserve the best tools, and that good tools get out of the way. An engineer by training, he built WAO's ordering system end to end: the AI assistant that takes orders on WhatsApp, the owner's controls, and the customer database behind it. He's here because he'd rather build something that puts money back in a restaurant's pocket than another app that takes it out.

LinkedIn
Who it's for

Every restaurant.
Anywhere in India.

Single outlet or growing chain, big city or small town, WAO works the same way. We're onboarding pilot restaurants now, pickup first, delivery next. Support runs on WhatsApp during Indian business hours.

Want to be one of the first?

Leave your details and we'll set up a free demo for your restaurant.

Book a free demo