‘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.