Where’s the party tonight?
As India heads for happy hour, the event planning and listing industry is enjoying record growth.
For most young Indians, nightlife options rank very high on the priority list when they are deciding on a city to work in. Cramped by busy schedules and career challenges, people look forward to unwinding at a good restaurant and attending events of their choice in the city. Metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru are a prime location for events like comedy shows, live concerts and theme parties.
With regards to this culture, Avelo Roy, Founder of Nearify, an event listings app said, “We noticed that people make weekend plans all the time. They also need to find places to go out on dates and keep them occupied on weekends. But to find the best events, you need to go through a lot of websites. This is where Nearify comes in. It scrapes the data through a lot of websites and filters the events that are most relevant to you.”
Options galore
From coupon apps that offer good deals on restaurants, to ticketing apps that allow hassle free booking solutions, companies are offering many solutions at the click of a button.
“We were trying to book services providers for our weddings but found nothing online. We decided to start a kind of Zomato for weddings and launched a Beta tech enabled platform together all the users and service providers. We realized that people did not want these services for their weddings but quite a few parents used the platform to book birthday parties for their children. We saw the product market fit and decided to venture into the event supplies market”, says Swati Bavanaka, Founder of Evibe, an event planning platform. Evibe is a tech enabled platform that connects users with suppliers for events like birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings and group dinners.
The boom in nightlife and entertainment options in Indian metropolitan cities is a reflection of a global trend. “Most of our audience is based out of UK and USA where we have seen nearly half a million downloads. We have noticed that Indians are also taking an interest in nightlife and are starting our service here as well as we hope for good growth in India.” adds Avelo.
On the issue of finding events, Aman Sridhar, a photographer says,” I mostly find events using Facebook or through my personal contacts. I may use an app to browse venues, if I’m in a different city. If I like the idea and user experience, I will use the app often.”
A host of ticketing and listing apps like Bookmyshow, Eventbrite, Zomato Gold and Dineout are seeing a lot of downloads. Armed with these apps in their smartphones, foodies, club hoppers and serial daters are identifying the most happening places in town.
Safety and Security
With increased offerings in terms of events and entertainment options, it necessary for companies to focus on the safety and security of users. “We have a Natural Language Processing engine that spends hours filtering events. The processing is so advanced that any event with bad reviews or negative online presence gets screened out. Once we created an event that had some sexist names and it was removed very soon. Suppose there are 10000 events, you might only receive 10 recommendations after filtering and keeping in mind your tastes.” says Avelo.
With regards to vetting service providers Swati adds, “Initially we do the social certifications and the social reviews. We also standardise prices and create market standards. We check in on events by asking the service provider to provide pictures so we can verify their services”. A rigorous vetting process will reduce the incidence of untoward incidents and ensure women’s safety as well.
Exciting growth prospects
“I feel that the future lies in empowering individuals. For example if I have a guitar and two hours free time, Nearify will recommend people near me who are interested to take lessons from me. You can be a chef, musician or a retailer and create your own micro events on Nearify.” says Avelo with optimism. He added that Nearify had received Angel funding from various entities in the U.S.
Sharing Avelo’s optimism, Swati added, “We are operating quite successfully in a niche market and have seen a 20% month on month growth. We might start some offline options for wedding services. We also plan on setting up experience centers and capturing a larger market share of events. Hyderabad angels have already provided us funding, and we have some more investors who are interested.”
The interest in live events and shows has boded well for the online ticketing market. The non-movie category of the online ticketing market has grown by 40 to 45 per cent in the third quarter of 2017. These event listing and ticketing apps will definitely change the way we discover places in metropolitan cities, and help us sort through the seemingly endless options.
From the December 2018 issue of FHM India.
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