Even though physical activities came to a standstill in 2020, digital events took over and gave upward thrust to a unique possibility inside the event management space
Among the Indian contenders in the digital events area, Hubilo’s journey has been underlined by way of a chief pivot to virtual events platform remaining 12 months
Hubilo banks on gamification tools, facts analytics to create interactive functions for huge virtual activities for enterprises and startups
From minor catering gigs, huge-scale company conventions to large weddings, the event management enterprise in India covers a variety of ground, but in latest months, the truth has changed notably. According to Statista, the revenue of the Indian occasion industry is predicted to be over INR 10K Cr in FY 2020-21 and that’s regardless of the Covid pandemic.
Even although bodily activities got here to a standstill, virtual activities took over and gave rise to a unique opportunity inside the event management area. Players including Hubilo, Hopin, Swapcard, Bizzabo and others have leveraged digital equipment and automation to maintain events going. And with technology coming to the fore, these structures are also taking digital occasions to the following stage with interactivity, networking and live video features, and more.
Among the Indian contenders in the virtual occasions space, Hubilo’s journey has been underlined via a primary pivot in which the startup moved from physical to virtual events amid the pandemic.
“The pivot proved to be successful for us as we grew from 30 personnel to nearly 300 personnel in a 12 months and feature accelerated our footprints within the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, and Africa Markets,” stated Vaibhav Jain, cofounder and CEO, Hubilo.
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Founded in 2015 through Jain and Mayank Agarwal, Hubilo started as a digital networking platform for attendees of live activities. A year after its inception, Hubilo decided to pivot to an occasion management platform concentrated on medium to huge-price ticket-size occasions for organisations. That changed into earlier than the pivot to live virtual occasions in 2020.
Hubilo’s virtual event platform turned into equipped inside a month of the lockdown, the agency claimed, with clients signed up earlier. At gift, Hubilo has over 500 customers such as Amazon Web Services, Siemens, cft, Roche, Tech In Asia, United Nations, Cognizant, Informa Markets, Fortune, GITEX and has carried out greater than 5000 occasions. The startup claims to be witnessing an MoM growth of 50%. The founders characteristic this fulfillment in large part to the great capabilities integrated into the platform that facilitates with engagement and facts analytics.
The platform consists of features like assembly tables, private rooms, assembly schedules, and gamification capabilities. It additionally integrates 1/3-birthday celebration systems like HubSpot, SalesForce and Marketo to examine the occasion statistics and get hold of insights.
Hubilo additionally credits its customer service team as one of the key differentiators for the startup. “We have a devoted crew to lend help before, at some point of and after the occasion to ensure the first-class enjoy. We also have kept our common reaction time between 30-45 seconds,” says Jain.
A Gamified Virtual Event Platform For Engagement
Gamification has end up a rising trend even among organisation tech packages — mainly people who involve more than one stakeholders. With the digital raise to the Indian economic system, many platforms have started out the usage of it as a strategic move to benefit long-time period retention and pressure engagement.
In the context of digital events, gamification adds another layer of immersion for attendees by means of giving them a danger to have interaction with each other, the speakers and other stakeholders — similar to in a real-world event. Hubilo has leveraged gamification gear consisting of polls, quizzes, contests, and leaderboards for engagement factors, which allows power interest from attendees for the virtual events. The event organisers can praise the maximum engaged attendees by way of retaining an eye fixed in this leaderboard.
Besides gamification, different engagement tools inclusive of lounges for networking possibilities for the attendees, digital booths for sponsors and exhibitors, breakout classes and demo rooms, live chats and event feeds assist add coloration and flair to virtual occasions, that are normally taken into consideration drab. All this has allowed Hubilo to obtain an engagement fee of one hundred forty%. The startup calculates engagement charge the use of a easy formulation of the range of video views divided by the full wide variety of attendees. As the videos also are stored by way of the platform for repeat viewing, the whole percent regularly is going above a hundred.
One of the biggest demanding situations in building a complete digital activities platform isn't always having enough remarks from customers on the product and the platform. Considering that it is a very client-centric area, product improvement is dependent on purchaser needs and necessities. To try to get an area on the competition, the startup leaned on statistics analytics and located it because the fee proposition for clients. Once the minimal possible product turned into prepared, Hubilo’s engineering and product teams proactively reached out to customers to add or remove capabilities to bridge the gaps based totally on facts.
Capitalising On ROI Through Data Analytics
Analytics can play a important position inside the virtual event space. When an occasion has loads of attendees, getting comments on the engagement of diverse sessions as well as the journey of attendees in the course of the occasion can deliver the consumer deep insights into what worked and what didn’t, but also on which attendees should emerge as ability customers for the client based totally on their engagement in sessions and booths and the relevant methods to target them.
When used efficiently, analytics from an occasion may want to lead to monetisation possibilities for corporations. At present, Hubilo’s platform can host up to 2 Mn attendees at any given point, so there are lots of statistics factors which might be generated from this sort of massive target audience.
To capitalise on the identical, Hubilo’s spread of analytics contains over 50 information factors to supply a complete record round occasions. The platform collects statistics on attendee behaviour, consultation engagement, speaker’s reception and profile views, the variety of commercial enterprise cards dropped and profile perspectives in sponsor booths, the total range of assembly requests, the conversion price for upselling and cross-selling and extra.
With all of the efforts, in view that its release, Hubilo’s platform has registered a total of two Mn attendees across 100 nations.
“Whether web hosting a virtual or hybrid event, the usage of a platform that gives actual-time analytics and insights across measurable metrics is beneficial in understanding no longer only the ROI for the modern event but also in growing strategies for destiny events,” says Agarwal, cofounder and CTO, Hubilo.
Future Plans And Newer Models
As digital occasions have taken over the world, Hubilo sees amazing expansion possibilities. With existing headquarters in San Francisco, a base office in Bengaluru, the startup is in process of acquiring an office area in London and expanding its remote places group size. It similarly intends to dive deeper into APAC, Middle East and African markets.
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“Organizations have already digitally converted in all different areas in their business, and have visible the advantages. Events will need to undergo a similar transformation if manufacturers need to liberate the energy of connection across broader audiences successfully and value-successfully. This is some thing we are looking to do at Hubilo,” says Cathy Song Novelli, SVP Marketing and Communications, Hubilo.
In order to accomplish its formidable growth plans, Hubilo plans to innovate its commercial enterprise version in addition by using transferring in the direction of a hybrid version similarly to its cutting-edge virtual platform. A hybrid version will permit a purchaser to host an occasion bodily whilst also parallelly hosting it online to awareness on engagement, lead generation for income and presenting analytical records for the event.
To permit this virtual + hybrid model of the startup, Hubilo is likewise undergoing a tech improve of its present platform. Calling it an ‘advanced model of Hubilo platform’, Jain explained that via the learnings of hosting over 5,000 events within the first yr of Hubilo’s digital platform, the new platform fills the gaps left behind inside the current one. With engagement as the focus, the new platform is predicted to have additional features together with extra tools of gamification, a bigger ability to deal with the target market, in addition to better streaming skills.
