“For us, it's far a friendship of 12 years. Right from the start, we depended on every other and knew that we needed to deliver every other area. That is the most effective way a CTO can think of innovation, and the CEO can think of the enterprise and its boom. Cofounders will continually require that form of accept as true with and area to make it a fulfillment.” — Mayank Agarwal, cofounder and CTO, Hubilo.
This knowledge between Agarwal and his cofounder Vaibhav Jain has enabled the duo to scale their startup through various market situations — pivoting and updating with every primary enterprise shift.
Hubilo changed into started in 2015 as a virtual networking platform and currently operates as an end-to-cease virtual occasion platform, with forty% of the client base within the US, while the APAC and the EU account for 25% every. Its esteemed customers consists of the United Nations, Walmart, AB InBev, Roche Pharma, Echo, and GITEX.
Earlier, the startup instructed cft that it shifted to live digital occasions 26 days into the 2020 lockdowns and due to the fact then have managed to onboard extra than 750 customers from one hundred+ countries and engaged with greater than a hundred Mn attendees via its portfolio of 10K+activities.
When asked about Hubilo’s inception, Agarwal recalled that his cofounder continually had an entrepreneurial mindset and the imaginative and prescient to start his enterprise. “After university, I became working for an IoT startup while he (Jain) known as and requested me to sign up for his startup and construct an in-residence tech group. And I stated sure with out thinking twice. I just knew that if he had commenced something, it might grow huge.”
But after they commenced as a virtual networking platform in 2015, the market become not ready for it. It became whilst Zoom or Google Meet or Meet Now had no longer grow to be component and parcel of our every day lives as they're now in a pandemic-hit global. People were worried of the digital world, and live-streaming of digital events become whatever but area of interest. But all that changed in 2020 because the Corona disaster added lifestyles (and the economic system) to a shuddering halt.
While businesses across sectors noticed their sales hit rock bottom, digital networking become a few of the few markets that witnessed a surge. By then, almost all firms had started out the usage of those systems for his or her everyday operations, particularly because the work-from-domestic subculture flourished because of lengthy spells of lockdowns across the usa.
As realisation dawned that the world would no longer go back to pre-Covid normalcy anytime soon, new virtual event platforms hit the marketplace, and event planners commenced exploring those. But none of these platforms had the tech stack that would assist enterprises host massive-scale activities.
Understanding the new task, Hubilo determined to tap into the opportunity. “We experimented and brought a video networking platform to our current one. We did this in 20 days with a small team of 35-forty humans. Out of them, best 10 have been engineers. In those 20 days, we released our new platform and hosted a completely a success occasion of around three hundred attendees,” brought Agarwal.
After website hosting the video-incorporated event, Hubilo fully realised the capacity on this space and commenced including more capabilities to its platform. Since its soar of tech, the enterprise has hosted large-scale activities — — for the Indian entities of companies including Publicis Sapient (TLG India), Nivea India, Reliance Jio, Schneider Electric, and George P. Johnson.
Here are the edited excerpts from cft’s interplay with Mayank Agarwal because the CTO charts the tech and innovation at Hubilo and his learnings through the pivots and increase.
cft: Tell us about the preliminary market hesitancy regarding virtual events. What are the important thing challenges, and the way superior is the Hubilo platform to counter them?
Mayank Agarwal: Hosting an event is an artwork. When you do it, you need to power attendee participation and engagement together with the periods, and it is difficult. In physical activities, there are alternatives of setting up stalls, cubicles, and extra. But the digital event itself turns into a venue, and you have to do everything internal it.
In the beginning, simply because the pandemic hit, manufacturers were hesitant, majorly because of the heavy dependence on technology. If one issue is going south, the whole enjoy may be ruined. But 4 or five months down the road, they commenced noticing the stableness of those structures. Not simply Hubilo but all different occasion platforms which can be sturdy enough. So, it’s all approximately trusting the platform.
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Going through this entire experience additionally made us comprehend that it's far vital to make certain that the event and the attendee stories continue to be wonderful for event tech structures like ours. Therefore, we always have a look at how we drive this journey on our platform via enticing and immersive occasion stories.
cft: What is the position of records and analytics in a successful virtual event? How can manufacturers make certain the success in their activities?
Mayank Agarwal: It is essential to take a look at the records from past events that could assist inform all departments of a advertising organisation what parts of the activities resonate the maximum with audiences. Using occasion generation, organisers can understand greater than who liked an event. They also can recognize the way to tailor each event revel in to the person earlier than, for the duration of, and after the event.
People like enticing content, particularly whilst they can engage in it with their buddies and associates. This is one of the motives that the Netflix “watch party” feature has been a big achievement on the platform. One engagement method that has worked correctly for Hubilo is to think about events from a broadcasting angle instead of simply trying to reflect a live event. Ultimately, human beings have to be capable of attend an event from everywhere and engage with the content material with other attendees, whether they’re in-character or virtual.
cft: You pivoted and released a new product in 26 days. You have additionally released Hubilo 2.Zero with extra functions. How did you achieve this feat?
Mayank Agarwal: We started out with a totally simple networking platform in 2015. And then, we experimented with the video factor. But at the same time as we saw increase, we knew it was not a sustainable model.
So, to apprehend the marketplace and what sort of functions we must deliver into the market, we did what we've usually completed. We focussed on what our customers were announcing.
You might also say this product has been constructed on customer comments. We accumulated a number of remarks, specially six months into the pandemic, asking them what had to be constructed and what they wanted to look on the virtual networking platform. Through that, we also understood the kind of provider-degree agreements we have to provide, the tweaks and the upgrades we would need to make, and more.
Plus, we had a crew operating on scaling, stability, and platform protection on the equal time, making sure that we'd be GDPR-geared up as well. After all, we needed to be open for the normal market. We additionally were given the ISO 27001 certification in the ones seven-eight months. So, the whole thing changed into jogging parallel again then.
cft: Hubilo has labored with worldwide brands. How do you make certain that manufacturers can leverage the platform’s capability to the fullest?
Mayank Agarwal: Well, we consider that Hubilo is a global platform. It is not restrained to any geography, and our customers across the globe remember the fact that the digital global is without boundaries. The credit for this need to visit our consumer achievement and onboarding teams. Understanding virtual activities and their complexities will be tough. Therefore, our first consciousness is educating our clients on how to reflect onconsideration on occasions from a hybrid or digital angle, how to engage with the attendees, how to scale the activities further, and more.
cft: What are the biggest challenges when you work with customers across sectors and from all over the international?
Mayank Agarwal: A essential mission is language, of course. When you need to attain out to exclusive regions, you should have get right of entry to to distinctive languages. It changed into a key motive for the new platform. We constructed the structure on the backend so that any language can be delivered inside a day. So far, the platform helps 10 languages, and we can be including greater very quickly. Our most current event that Hubilo hosted had a sign language interpreter as nicely, making the event more inclusive.
cft: What about the unexpected client surge amid the pandemic? What changes were required to your operations and business model to deal with it?
Mayank Agarwal: We have a totally responsive customer service crew, and we've got simply no response time as a customer support supervisor is proactively on-name at some stage in exercise sessions, throughout the event have to any troubles stand up, and after the occasion if the client wishes assist deciphering the statistics. They are not just offering assist over chat or e mail. The customer support supervisor is a part of the overall occasion group and is to be had to help in real-time at each occasion. During the surge, we elevated our group, and now we have 60-70 qualified engineers who recognise how to resolve complex troubles. We also revamped our infrastructure and tech stack to help huge events as we knew we need to be ready for it. All we had was a grace length of 3-4 months because planners could take that time to alter to the virtual event area. Those months were like a warfare duration for us. We grew across all departments.
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cft: The global is catching on to hybrid activities. What can we expect from Hubilo to amplify that enjoy?
Mayank Agarwal: To accommodate hybrid activities at the platform, we've got made loads of updates to our these days released app. We at the moment are presenting attendees and speakers with a one-to-one video calling alternative except front room and networking alternatives and extra. We have additionally opened our platform to a variety of companies, making it more bendy.
Hubilo has currently released a take a look at-in app to assist organisers enhance protection, protection, and compliance for his or her attendees, audio system, and teams — both in physical and virtual activities.
cft: Finally, what’s next in your product playbook and international expansion plan?
Hubilo has the most important suite of engagement and gamification capabilities in the marketplace and we’re persevering with to feature to that suite of capabilities so that humans can engage anywhere they're, on any tool. I don’t need to get into our international enlargement plans simply yet, because the digital international is in the end without borders and our occasions may be hosted from everywhere and in any timezone. That’s one among the largest advantages of a virtual event.
