At 9 years old, I was taking phone orders behind the counter of my family’s first small takeaway.

By 16, I was running the front of house — watching the same chaos unfold every night.

Ringing phones. Short-staffed kitchens. Missed orders. Frustrated customers.

And every missed call meant one thing: lost money.

Whenever the phone rang, it wasn’t random.

People called to place an order, book a table, or simply ask, _“What time do you close?”_

Every call was intent., and when we missed it, we lost revenue.

In seven years, my parents fought through the pain and built from 1 to 11 locations.

But the problem never disappeared.

Phones ringing nonstop. Staff too busy to answer. Customers giving up.

We were losing thousands every month — not because of bad food or bad service, but because no one could get through.

That’s why we built Certus AI.

Not out of some tech lab in Silicon Valley, but from living and breathing the restaurant grind my entire life.

We’re on a mission to make sure no restaurant ever loses a customer because of a missed call again.

Restaurants don’t need more software. They need reliability.

The truth is, restaurants have been left behind.

Most tech companies build tools for restaurants, not with them.

They don’t understand the grind— the heat of the kitchen, the pressure of a dinner rush, the exhaustion of a 14-hour shift where every second counts.

And the big tech giants? They’re not helping either.

They’ve spent millions building in-house voice systems, then gatekeep the technology, leaving independent owners locked out of the same efficiency the chains enjoy.