OrderIn has won the MTN Business Consumer App of the Year Award. The locally founded food delivery app, which delivers food to consumers and businesses in all of the main metropoles, were selected from over 60 finalists in 12 categories. The award ceremony took place last night, the 12^th of October, at the Galleria Conference and Events Venue in Sandton, Johannesburg.

“We couldn’t be more excited for this award. When we first launched OrderIn in 2012, I walked around Cape Town signing up restaurants myself - back then the idea of ordering a meal from your phone was foreign to restaurant owners, they thought I had lost my mind. Now we work with over 1 200 restaurants and expect to double that over the next year,” says OrderIn founder and CEO, Dinesh Patel.

The App of the Year Awards celebrates out-of-the-box thinkers that drive change through real solutions that deal with real problems. The 12 categories for this year’s awards are Best Enterprise, Best Consumer, Best Financial, Best Incubated Solution, Most Innovative, Best Breakthrough Developer, Best Educational, Best South African App, Best Agricultural Solution, Best Gaming, Best Women in STEM and Best Health Solution.

OrderIn was named winner in the Best Consumer App category, with Standard Bank's Shyft App walking away with the overall MTN Business App of the Year award. Other winners include TransUnion in the Best Enterprise App category, Pick n Pay Super Animals for Best Gaming Solution and Zulzi scooped the Best Breakthrough Developer App.

Launched initially as an online platform that brought restaurants and consumers together in the areas they lived and worked in, OrderIn got the boost it needed in 2015, with new technology that enabled it to go mobile.

On the B2B side, OrderIn has found a way to incorporate a local tax benefit into its app. Food ordered via the service during business hours, provides an instant tax-break to employees registered on the app through a benefit package made available to corporate clients. Offering wider variety and lower overheads than an in-house canteen, a number of businesses, including the likes of Dimension Data, Media24 and Societe General, have signed up to the service. On the consumer side, OrderIn offers a cashless payment service from a diverse selection of menus.

With more than a 1 000% growth in the last two years alone, OrderIn is transparent with their pricing. The app clearly shows when a restaurant has in-store pricing, with only a handful of restaurants choosing to mark-up their prices. They are also the only food delivery app in South Africa to guarantee that 100% of the delivery fee and tip goes to the driver.

“We are only at the beginning of our journey - it’s basically day one of food ordering in South Africa. For now our focus remains on building the best and widest selection of restaurants nationally with the shortest delivery times and best pricing, while our corporate offering becomes a mainstream employee benefit alongside healthcare and pension,” says Patel.

The MTN App of the Year Awards have become a catalyst for technological change in the country. Now in its sixth year, the awards have unearthed new app developers and helped promote the growth of an innovative mobile tech scene in South Africa.