In China there's a long tradition of greeting a friend by asking, "Have you eaten yet?" It is a reflection of the importance of food in a nation where grandmothers still remember lean years, businessmen use banquets to seal deals and workers don't skip lunches in company canteens.

Now eating enters the digital age in a flourishing new industry typified by the?ele.me?website. The concept is simple: Cater to people who want to order delivered meals with the click of a mouse.

The website was founded by Zhang Xuhao, a third year graduate student at prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and engineering classmate Kang Jia in 2008. The pair are part of what their generation calls "irrational entrepreneurs" - impulsive people willing to take a risk and go-for-broke in the e-commerce sector.

"As long as we fight together, we can achieve success and expand into more businesses," said Zhang, harking to small start-ups that evolved into successful big companies like Alibaba or Taobao.

They started their company, which was initially called ELEME Inc, with an investment of 100,000 yuan (US$14,706). The company broke even in its first two years and has attracted 500,000 yuan from "angel investors" who like this business concept.

Zhang, 25, and Kang, of the same age, changed their company name this year to Rajas Information & Technology Co.

Co-founders set their sights high

Ordering meals online has been a big hit with university students.

"Ele.me is super convenient," said Emma Li, a Jiao Tong University student.

"Just click the mouse and foods will be delivered to the saved address in the system. It saves the time of having to keep redialing a restaurant at peak hours when phone lines are busy."

Ele.me has 12,000 registered users and processes several thousand orders a day. The annual transaction value has reached 10 million yuan (US$1.47 million).

Incomes come from several channels including the fee that restaurants pay Ele.me for each transaction or for joining the platform.

Kang said the estimated market volume for online meal orders citywide in Shanghai is more than 100 million yuan.

The co-founders have their sights set high. They are moving to a 300-square-meter office loft from the 80-square-meter apartment where they started the company. Recruitment is also under way for more staff.

"We are receiving more business than we initially expected," Kang said. "Who knows? We may someday expand nationwide or even globally."

According to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, the transaction volume of e-commerce in Shanghai reached 325 billion yuan in 2009, accounting for about 5 percent of total retail sales in the city.

Nationwide, e-commerce turnover is expected to be more than 4 trillion yuan this year, China e-Business Research Center said in a report.

Turning something 'upside down'

"Rajas" means "passion" in Sanskrit. Their passion is to start up their own business and become the newest pioneers to stake their future in the telecommunications age. So why not e-restaurants?

"We wanted to turn something upside-down, and the restaurant seemed a good a choice as any," said Zhang. "Although we didn't do much preparation work, so far our venture has turned out fairly well."

Ele.me translates as "Are you hungry?" in Chinese. The website targets those who are addicted to websites and used to shopping for all their needs online.

The site provides comprehensive information about restaurants offering delivery services: menus, prices, telephone numbers, addresses, delivery times, special offer coupons and even restaurant reviews.

Just by entering an address, a user can receive specific information about particular restaurants and then order meals of their choice.

At present, the website covers about 10,000 restaurants in Shanghai. It started by collecting information on restaurants near Shanghai Jiao Tong University and expanded from there.

The website co-founders contracted with one small restaurant to actually provide the food delivery. Since more people order out on rainy or wintry days, the young company has to endure some pretty adverse conditions to get food to doorways.

"We enjoyed that process, which may become the happiest moment when we looked back on this business one day," said Kang, the chief operations officer. "Maybe one day we'll be successful enough to buy an office building in Xujiahui, but these are times that will be engraved in our minds."

The fledgling company has invited two more partners to help build the online platform and liaise more efficiently with restaurants to ensure that menu and price information is updated and that customer orders are being processed correctly and quickly.

Getting restaurants to join system

For the company, the road to success is one step at a time.

It took them up to four months to collect information on nearly 10,000 restaurants around the city. Since the information had never been centrally collected, they had to hit the pavement, knocking on doors, explaining their business mode and convincing restaurants that it would be a useful network to join.

Kang said he set the record of visiting some 160 restaurants in just one day.

"We had to do some talking to get them to use our online system alongside the usual call-in services," he said.

On the user front, marketing was much easier, especially among students. The team used university bulletin boards and leaflets to get the word out on campuses. Penetrating the ranks of white-collar workers has been more difficult. The pair is using social network sites such as Kaixin001, Twitter-like websites and online game portals in their initial marketing.

The two men said they want to get large fast-food chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut into their service, but that will take a lot more work.

"These brand names are expected to be our major customers because we think our online system is the beginning of a trend," said Kang. He said the large chains could save a lot of money and manpower by switching to online orders rather than phone-ins.

Small as the company is now, the co-founders have their sights set high and retain unbridled confidence in their business strategy.

"We believe it provides substantial opportunities," Zhang said.