Founded in 2013, Venuelook is currently an online-to-offline marketplace disrupting the Venue Discovery and Booking process for Weddings, Social and Corporate Events. Sharad Gupta, Editor, SMEpost.com caught up with Ruchi Garg, Founder and Chief Everything Officer, Venuelook. Here are excerpts of the exclusive conversation.
Q: Indian events market is estimated to be ~ 50 Bn USD industry where venue and FnB typically account for 40% of the pie which is extremely fragmented. How does Venuelook fit into this space?
A: Yes, Venues+FnB are the largest piece from the pie and also the first step in event planning. Event hosts finalize first the venue, then the catering (which often comes along with the venue) and then move on to hire allied services and shop for event supplies. VenueLook continues to aggregate the fragmented supply of venues for event hosts to discover, compare and book the best-suited venues for their events. We cater to events ranging from 15-1500+ guests and we realize that this market is a blue ocean.
Q: Please tell us about Venuelook.com and what need is it serving?
A: VenueLook is currently an online-to-offline marketplace disrupting the Venue Discovery and Booking process for Weddings, Social and Corporate Events! We are providing event hosts and venue managers a common platform to meet, engage and host events.
Q: Who are your target customers?
A: Being a marketplace, both demand and supply are important for us. On the demand side, our target customers are working people like us, in the age group of 25-45 years, who are planning a social or a corporate event. On the supply side, our target customers are owners and managers of banquets, farm houses, hotels, restaurants, clubs, resorts etc. who want business growth.
Q: Which all locations are you available at right now and how do you plan to scale up?
A: We are operational in 5 cities of Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. The focus for 3-months is to grow demand and supply within these cities and then scale 1 city at a time. Next cities are Jaipur, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad in no particular order.
Q: What is your business model? Can you please give us some insight into your revenue projections?
A: We have a hybrid business model – we charge venues a subscription fee for premium partnership. Depending on the size and location of the property, there are different promotional packages for them. We will do 3X in terms of revenue this financial year w.r.t. 2015-16. And we are working towards a goal of 250 M USD in 2020.
Q: How is the Indian online events market shaping up in terms of players like you?
A: We’ve seen 20 different companies pop up in the same space since we started. It’s good more and more people realize that there is need for such a service and that there are problems to solve. Recently, some wedding planning platforms have raised funding from angel investors to solve primarily venue discovery. Overall, the space is hot and everyone is trying to build the market in their own way.
We are #1 in the space from all respects – organic traffic, good word of mouth, referrals and sustainable growth.
Our USPs are:
Problem-solving via technology and processes
A lean, solid business with good unit economics
A committed, passionate team that knows how to work hard and persist
Q: What percentage of your business is from corporate events?
A: Currently, 15%. We are about to launch a specific service for Corporate events soon. In 2016 our focus is to go deeper in the 3 prime regions in India, serve 1L+ events, generate best ROI for all our premium partners [venues] and grow our revenue by 3X at least. We will continue to maintain the balance between depth and breadth of our business as we scale up.
