Within two months of raising $1M, Weddingz.in raises another round of funding
Mumbai-based Weddingz.in, an online marketplace for wedding venues and vendors, has raised its pre-Series A round of funding from Sixth Sense Ventures. The platform will use the funding for building technology and team expansion. It aims to enhance its customers experience by technology development like making virtual tours of venues on website possible. It is also looking to enter into new categories like décor and honeymoon packages. During December last year, it raised over $1 million in seed capital from a group of angel investors led by Ambit Capital.
“The wedding industry is extremely fragmented with 1,00,000 vendors in top 20 cities. We aim to fill an obvious gap in the fragmented weddings and events industry – that of finding the right vendor at the right price. Further with a change in the age at which people are getting married, younger generation is taking control and planning their own weddings. Convenience becomes a key factor for these time-starved couples who are looking for a one-stop solution for their entire wedding needs,” says Sandeep Lodha, Founder and CEO, Weddingz.
Launched in January 2015, Weddingz is a technology-enabled wedding planning platform that simplifies the process of finding and booking services at the best prices. Initially, it started its operations in Mumbai, and now has expanded to 10 cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Goa. It expects to extend its reach to 20 cities, including Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad, by the end of 2016. With a listing of more than 2,000 wedding venues and 2,000 wedding vendors across 10 locations in India, it calls itself the largest warehouse of wedding service providers. The company also claims to organise more than 200 weddings every month.
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The wedding industry in India is pegged at USD 40 billion, with 10 million weddings taking place annually. The market is growing at 25 per cent per year. According to Lodha, an average Indian middle class family spends USD 20,000 on a wedding.
Wedmegood, Shaadisaga, and Bollywoodshaadis are some of the platforms which are competing with each other in this segment. During September last year, Gurgaon-based Wedmegood raised Rs 2.7 crore from Indian Angel Network.
Like other industries, this million dollar wedding industry is also evolving. And the recent funding also shows the rising interest of investors in the sector. The enormous wedding market creates a large business opportunity in this segment; thus, associated industries are bound to propagate in the coming years.
