‘Stay
Connected’ is the mantra for successful business and you need to discover ways to grow exponentially
early on, and nothing fuels growth faster than connecting the right people at
right time. 10times
is doing the same it is the world's largest business &
professional event discovery and networking platform. It has more than 250k
events from 10000+ cities and more than 45 million professionals have used the
platform to find relevant events and business leads.
The name behind this venture is
Mr. Atul Todi and Mr. Mayank Chowdhary, the founders of 10Times.
Speaking to Safari Plus, Mr. Atul Todi reveals
about his project -
How
did the idea came to start?
Coming from a business background, we
attended a lot of tradeshows & conferences. In our search to find the best
events, we realised that discovery process was broken and we were not getting
the desired ROI from meeting relevant people.
What are
the special key features of your startup?
Some of the key features of our startup-
For an eventgoer, based on their
interests, we recommend relevant events to attend and introduce them to other
attendees.
1.
Easy event discovery based on smart
filters
1. Only
platform with business event ratings & reviews
2. Algorithm
driven match-making to help connect professionals
For an organiser, we provide them a
complete event management solution to better manage the communication, increase
engagement and get analytics around their event. Also our platform helps them
capture and analyze data on their audience and equips them with valuable
insights.
How
are you different from the existing ones?
● Most
existing companies in the business event space function like an event
classified. We work as a networking platform that is built upon event
discovery. We allow users to see other interested eventgoers and schedule
meetings.
● We
are an O2O2O company - online
(discover events) to offline (meet people) to online (continue conversation)
Unlike
other event sites, we focus on the business space and bring all the
stakeholders onto one platform.
How
do you monetize?
We monetize in the following ways:
-
Event promotion & lead generation
-
Event Management System
-
Advertising
-
Hotel & Venue Promotion
What
are the challenges your startup faced while setting up the business?
The main challenge we faced while setting
up the business was resistance from organisers. They were scared that we would
capture their user data. Slowly this resistance has diminished as organisers
have realised that besides helping them manage their events & generate more
business, we actually secure their data and make the data more intelligent with
constant enrichment.
What
is the market size and market opportunity?
Globally almost 500 million people attend
events yearly and businesses spend 20% of their marketing budget at these
events ($100 billion out of $540 billion). There is more networking and
information sharing that happens at these events than platforms like Linkedin
and Facebook.
What
are the traction details?
Current
Status:
● Registered
Users - 2 million+
● Monthly
Event Registrations - 1 lac +
● Monthly
Connect Requests - 1.25 lac +
● Total
App Downloads (July, 2016) - 1.5 lac +
Future Plan is to build a platform for
100 million+ business community, as an alternative to Linkedin.