KFC First Fast Food Restaurant to Enable Ordering Through Alexa Skill in India
KFC is the first fast food restaurant in India to enable ordering through its branded Alexa skill the company announced yesterday. It is also the global restaurant’s first foray in voice-first ordering. KFC tapped Haptik, an enterprise Conversational AI platform based out of Mumbai to create the voice solution on Amazon Alexa.
The skill is enabled by saying “Alexa, start / launch KFC” and then users can hear menu options, place an order, get promotional offers or even hear a chicken joke. The skill is also able to decipher the user’s location to find the nearest KFC franchise and product-availability in real-time. However, the skill does not permit credit card payments for orders, instead only accepting cash on delivery. Moksh Chopra, CMO of KFC India commented, “Voice recognition is becoming a game changer today, with millennials rapidly embracing and getting comfortable with this new technology. Enabling this functionality with Haptik, we are creating the next-gen eating experience by building on factors like ease of access, digital menus, personalized engagement, etc. The idea is to create a whole new-ordering experience in the QSR category. We are confident that with more and more consumers engaging with these smart speakers, Alexa will give impetus to online ordering.”
Growing Online Food-Delivery Through Voice in a Young Market
It may seem strange that KFC chose to launch its first Alexa skill with voice ordering capabilities in India, considering KFC only has 380 outlets in the country compared to almost 5,000 in the US. But the online food-delivery market in India is still relatively young and growing fast. In 2017, it was estimated to be a seven billion-dollar industry and funding in India’s food-tech sector was expected to hit almost $500 million, a significant increase from $125 million in 2017.
By launching in India first, KFC gets to become the first company to offer ordering via Alexa in the country and differentiate itself from the competition. In addition to being first, the young Indian population is also rapidly adopting voice. A recent study by Travelport found that 69% of Indians used voice search to research a trip. This large percentage was attributed to the country’s young population, which will be the youngest in the world by 2020. One can see the benefit of being the first restaurant to access this growing market by providing a convenient, easy way to order through Amazon Alexa.
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