A DEALMAKER has been appointed by a Scots tech firm to spearhead the growth of its hospitality platform.
Alliance-building expert Alastair Hutt has been appointed as Head of Partnerships with ePOS Hybrid, a SAAS & fintech provider.
Its point of sale (POS), ops management and digital ordering solutions automate the operations of restaurants, bars, takeaways and other hospitality businesses and allows them to create new sales channels while increasing their efficiency.
Alistair’s 40-year career has seen him him develop partnerships with Direct Line, Worldpay, DHL and Regus, as well as working with fintech companies such as CrowdCube, iwoca & FundingCircle.
Alastair said: “Forming successful partnerships can be the springboard for ambitious companies like ePOS Hybrid.
“My role is to identify those potential partnerships, bring both parties together and to manage the alliance to elevate our businesses, product offering and to ultimately deliver mutual business growth.
“I am delighted to have joined this forward-thinking company as it prepares to roll out exciting new tech internationally, which will be the catalyst to introducing a new cohort of business partners to ePOS Hybrid.”
Founded by computer science graduate and entrepreneur Bhas Kalangi, ePOS Hybrid offers a suite of fully-connected point-of-sale, fintech and digital ordering solutions for hospitality businesses.
The firm’s technology can automate a bar or restaurant’s operations and streamline processes to enhance everything from customer ordering and loyalty to stock control and kitchen management.
The pandemic encouraged restaurants, bars and takeaways to take the leap and rely on technology more than ever before as the industry reacted to seismic changes.
This saw ePOS Hybrid’s product usage rocket by 2,000% in the last year, while its client portfolio has risen by more than 400%.
Since its launch in January 2020, ePOS Hybrid’s tech has processed in excess of £90m of sales for UK businesses and more than 7m consumers have used the firm’s products to order a meal or buy a round of drinks.
Alastair’s new role follows a spell as a Non-Executive Director with ePOS Hybrid, which convinced him to take on a bigger role with the fast-expanding firm.
He added: “As a Non-Executive Director at board level no matter how much you try to delve in, it’s hard to really get a strong feeling of what is going on day-to-day.
“Part of taking up this role was to get much closer to the business and to understand more about where it is going and the potential, which is huge.
“Bhas’s ambition for the company and what he wants to achieve in terms of hypergrowth and expansion abroad is pretty amazing and having worked with him over the last few years I’ve got lots of confidence that he will succeed.”
ePOS Hybrid are currently developing a new API Platform – a technology which allows different software packages to connect and instantly share functionality and data.
New partners of ePOS Hybrid will be able to integrate and utilise the business’s functionality to deliver new features to their customers and enhance their product offering.
Using the API platform, partners will be able to harness a range of features including table reservation systems, digital ordering tech, and kitchen management products.
It will allow third-party single solution products such as online ordering or mobile app providers to seamlessly send their customer’s orders to ePOS Hybrid’s point of sale and kitchen management solutions, further automating a restaurant’s operations.
Andrew Gibbon, Head of Growth at ePOS Hybrid, said: “Alastair’s invaluable experience in business growth, product development and partnerships will be a huge asset in the launch of our new API, which will play a central role in our aggressive growth strategy.”
During Alastair’s banking career he also led a 150-strong business development team in business lending.
He has also operated as a business mentor, a board member of SMEs and former board member Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce.
Those roles have seen him assist SMEs with innovation and product development, work with large household names and smaller players to develop propositions which underpin business growth.
