Picatic supports small event organizers by helping them crowdfund their events

Every organization, no matter how big or small, in the business of events will go through that gut wrenching few weeks in the lead up to an event - will we be able to pull off the event, will we be able to manage the logistics, will the content of the event be engaging enough and most of all, will people come? These worries stem from the fact that there are a lot of upfront costs that an organizer incurs before the event itself. For a lot of events, covering these costs and possibly even making a profit is dependent largely on ticket sales.

Former event manager, Jayesh Parmar, was all too familiar with these pains. Back in 2008, he decided to help out his fellow event organizers around the world by starting up Picatic, an online event management portal. Apart from the regular offerings of an event management portal, Picatic has some interesting features, including one that would help crowd-fund your event and, even use their services for free. (Yup, you read that right.)

The phenomenon that is crowdfunding

I think cowdfunding is such a rage for a reason - It is a great sense of validation when a lot of people are willing to part with their hard earned money for an idea or a product. Picatic allows a crowdfunding feature where event organizers can set a budget that they would require to raise within a period of time for the event to go ahead. In return for putting money into the event, the organizers can provide tickets and swags in return.

Now the interesting part about this feature is that if the money isn't raised in the allotted time, then the money is returned to all the contributors. If money is raised, the event organizer goes ahead with spending the raised money running the event. For someone without any sponsor backing, this is a great option, as it completely negates many major risks of running an event.

The feature on Picatic is called 'Tilt' and it is explained very well in this video -

Other features 

In all it's media coverage, Picatic's crowd funding facility has been extensively written about. But there is a lot more to Picatic than the feature. For one, it is quite an impressive event management portal. The customization features that it provides for an event webpage is quite impressive and it's reporting facilities are tightly integrated with their smartphone app (iOS only). The site is also

integrated with MailChimp for event promotion, along with the regular social media integration. There is also an event widget that can be embedded into the event organizer's business website as well.

However, the fact that you can choose what you want to pay the platform for simply stands out for me. Picatic calls it 'Fair Play' where you can choose how much of the profit you want to part with Picatic. You can pay them anywhere between 0 to 100 percent of your profits. They claim that there is "no catch" to this offering.

So will Indian event organizers use Picatic? 

Picatic is a five year old company, founded in Vancouver, Canada. It has raised a seed round of $200k and is looking to raise a next round of funding in the coming days. As of now, Picatic has no India specific features suggesting it isn't thinking of India as market they'd like to check out. But if there were looking to come to India, here's what we think -

For an event backed by sponsors, not going ahead with an event is not an option. For such

events, the Tilt feature, which is one of Picatic's main feature might not be all that relevant. However, this will be hugely useful for smaller event organizers - small time bands looking to conduct a concert and other community events can reduce the risk of running an event.If and when it comes to India the likes of MeraEvents, Ayojak (now Explara), Eventify and a lot more have already achieved significant mindshare in this space. India is a red market for Picatic on from a typical event management portal standpoint. However, there aren't many catering for the small time event managers in India and this sharing economy concept might work with the new age Indian. Furthermore, with India's love for anything 'free' I'm not sure how exactly the Fair Play feature would work out in India.

But overall, if Picatic is to come to India, it would bring a top class product which provides a great user experience. It could even create a niche for itself in the small time event management community. But it's performance overall as a full fledged event management portal addressing all market segments can only be judged over time.

Check out Picatic and tell us what you think.