Euphoriq enters the big fat Indian wedding app market
The big fat Indian wedding market is one of the few markets that don't get hit by inflation or recession easily. One new player to enter this lucrative market is Euphoriq, a mobile app that lets you and your wedding guests create, share and manage all the wedding pictures at one place. It offers a wedding website along with the app and lets you share your wedding program, venue, timings and many more things with your guests.
Euphoriq is co-founded by two college mates, Shyam Seshadri and Tejas Dave, who completed their undergraduate engineering degrees at the University of Texas. While Shyam was working in Google, Tejas joined a PE firm in Texas. After four years at Google, Shyam came back to India and pursued MBA from ISB, post which he started up Fundoo Solutions. Tejas is an IIM Bangalore alumnus and has worked as a management consultant with Booz & Company.
They stayed in touch through the years and often discussed interesting market trends and ideas to start up. But Euphoriq’s idea came from a rather personal experience and not a brainstorming session. “When I got married in 2012, we got to know first-hand that it requires a significant planning and coordination. It takes six to eight months to even get a wedding album done which is a long time to wait for your wedding pictures. What most people don’t realize is that some of the best moments related to the wedding are sitting on people’s phones. We felt that in today’s world of modern technology many of the tasks involved in weddings can be well automated and one can save time and energy both,” says Tejas.
What Euphoriq does?
“Euphoriq is a platform that allows couples to quickly create a beautiful wedding website and mobile app to share with all their guests with the relevant information about the wedding. We understand the special needs of Indian weddings such as cultural sensitivities, logistical challenges and technology quotient. Euphoriq’s mobile app and website are designed to cater specially to these. Euphoriq has a simple UX suitable for all age groups,” says Shyam.
With Euphoriq, couples can create a wedding website and mobile app that helps them publish all wedding events, manage guest lists with ease of sending out emails and app notifications, track RSVPs which helps with event budgets and logistics, capture pictures, send automatic reminders to guests to post the photos and share them, personalize the experience through custom domains, wedding codes and designs etc.
Couples can create an account on the mobile app for Rs 2499. This access lets couples invite unlimited guests to the app who can access it for free. Euphoriq offers customizations in the mobile app, custom domains, exclusive apps and other add-on services too.
Selling a paid mobile app to Indian users
One of their biggest challenges has been to convey the value proposition Euphoriq holds. “Once people understand, they love it, but the initial message is something we are working very hard on,” says Shyam, adding, “People in India are used to free mobile apps. We are trying to make them understand that they are paying for a service and not for a single instance of the Euphoriq mobile app.”
Euphoriq has 50 plus registered weddings and over a 1000 uploaded photos in the past two months since its launch. When it comes to the mobile app market, there exist a few international players such as WeddingParty, Appy Couple, WedPics etc but the Indian wedding app market is still quite nascent and hence fairly open.
Past experiences and future plans
Shyam and Tejas share that their biggest mistake initially was missing to see the forest for the trees. At times, they spent their energy and time doing things perfectly only to discard it a few weeks later. Not following up on Payment Gateways and Apple App Store processes delayed the launch by a few weeks. Over time, they have learnt to ensure that they are approaching the right problem before jumping into the implementation details. It has helped them speed up tremendously. They have two developers and one designer in their team which works from Euphoriq’s Mumbai office.You will be seeing a social media blitz with heavy Euphoriq branding and advertising in the near future. They will also be launching a series of add-ons for couples, including a collated wedding album, photo sorting service and other similar products.
“We are looking for external investments and plan to use the funding to rapidly scale our presence across major wedding markets in India. Our goal is to get to a point where as soon as couples decide to get married or the match is made, they get started with their wedding planning experience on Euphoriq,” says Shyam.
Website: Euphoriq.in
