Ruchit Garg & Vishwa Vivek, Founders of eventNu.com - an Online Event Registration company

eventNu is an online service which allows event organizers to Publish, Promote and Sell their event tickets online. Around 11,000 events have been served via eventNu platform so far!eventNu is the Pune Outreach Partner for techsparks.in

In a conversation with YourStory.in Founder of eventNu, Vishwa, tells us about his business model.

Vishwa, tell us about eventNu.

eventNu is an online platform that helps event organizers to publish, promote and sell their event tickets online. It’s very easy to use platform and gives event organizers immediate professional presence over internet, spiced with social media integration, survey tools and premium customer support. When someone partners with us, we virtually take charge of their event’s online needs and let event organizer focus on what they should be doing, i.e. organize events.

When was eventNu started?

It’s been a while. It took shape of a formal entity in the middle of year 2009.

So, what’s the story behind eventNu?

Well, it all started as a hobby when we started listing out local events over a blog just to share it with friends/family around. But soon, we started getting emails/comments on blog asking for more details on events, requests to publish other events. That’s when we decided that there is a business opportunity for the same!

How do you make money?

It’s a free-mium model where event organizers can start publishing and selling their event tickets online for free. If they have ‘paid’ tickets, then we charge small transaction fee per ticket. We take absolutely no setup fees, which makes the deal very attractive for organizers as they don’t pay us anything until there is a ticket sold via our platform. Some of our high value customers who want to reinforce their branding, pay to have branded event pages, branded digital tickets, social media marketing and more.

How are you different from other online ticketing portals?

Well, our focus is on providing exceptional customer service. We do whatever it takes to make our customer’s happy and increase their business. We provide unique features like custom ‘ticket’ where organizer can publish literally anything they want in the ticket. They can use this feature to raise additional sponsorship for the event, or can add map/guide for the event.In this competitive space, how do you plan to gain/maintain traction?

We(including our competition) are operating at the tip of the possibilities. This market is certainly huge. We plan to grow by continually adding value to the existing customers as well as enabling scenarios for newer segments. For example, recently we have launched an eventNu venue service, which allows event organizers to find venues. These venues are rated by others in the same community helping organizers find appropriate venue for their events. Also, we dabble with new technology all the time.

How do you outreach?

Word of mouth is the best outreach model for bootstrapped companies. When an organizer sells a ticket via eventNu, they advertise about us(directly/indirectly). This advertisement brings in a user who buys a ticket at eventNu and tells all his friends on facebook and twitter about an event he is going to attend, which results in more sales. It’s an interesting outreach model, which works on its own and have worked for us so far.What are the biggest challenges faced in this market space?

Like any other startup who is handling online payments, we find that majority of the people still shy away from using credit cards online. Its improving day by day, but not yet comparable to developed countries like USA.

How much capital was required to startup?

Well, in our case hobby transitioned into a business. We already had a web space for our personal blogs and we bought a domain name, installed a wordpress instance and got started…so maybe 500/- INR for a domain name and lot of hard work and passion. As you can imagine, we made lot of expense since then though.

How big is your team? Where are you based? Are you looking at hiring?

We are a team of two. Ruchit is based in Seattle and I am in Pune. Based on the requirements we sometimes work with freelance designers and/or interns. We have recently hired a few interns from IIT.

Tell us about the strategic partnerships that helped you.

There are a few partnerships that are in the pipeline, but it is too early to disclose. Microsoft recently blogged about eventNu, which brought us some international attention.

Great, so what kind of support are you looking at from YourStory.in readers?

I would encourage them to check out eventNu’s website and use our services for selling their event tickets online. It’s a free service and we don’t earn until you earn! We have hosted over 11,000 events so far and have lots of data. If you are an app developer or a portal owner wanting to display event related data on it, would love to partner and enable scenarios for you!

Do check out http://eventnu.com/ for more details