Helping Indians say ‘I Do’ tech-style, Wedding Plz aims to become the largest online shop for all wedding needs
Bed of roses, sparkling dresses, and a burst of colors straight out of a Yash Raj film is what everyone pictures when they think about weddings. The reality, however, is not as charming as shown in bollywood. While the brides scream and go crazy to look their best on the D-Day, the groom and families go bonkers coordinating with tons of vendors to put the event together. But worry not, Wedding Plz, a startup based in Delhi, has created a platform to make your wedding planning look as comfortable as shopping online!
Wedding Plz is a vendor discovery search portal designed to find the best wedding vendors in town. It houses everything that’s required to plan and organise a wedding, thus helping the to-be-wed couples – search, manage and organise everything they need, online. “It was a last minute search for a good caterer during my cousin’s wedding that got me interested in this problem,” shares the Founder of Wedding Plz, Manas Wadhwa. Manas started the company in January 2014 after his successful stint as a restaurateur and entrepreneur. “I want the process of searching wedding products and services as easy as finding a restaurant on Zomato,” says Manas.
While many teams in the past have tried to come up with similar idea, Wedding Plz looks like a well thought out product with a large database. They are currently present in four cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, and Ludhiana and have a database of around 37,500 suppliers.
What makes the platform more interesting are the real-time reviews and ratings for the vendors on the website given by people who have actually used their services or products. The website has a clean design and is easy to navigate. Although Manas is not a techie, he has always been passionate about products backed by technology and has founded a 360 degree virtual tour company in the past. He brings in experience in business development, product development and design to pave the growth path at Wedding Plz.
“In a country where we see around 100 lac weddings in a year, Wedding Plz is the most comprehensive wedding search portal. We have an array of features like local vendor search, genuine couple reviews, upcoming wedding events and exhibitions, deals and discounts and wedding planning tools like budget manager, checklist, to-do list management, and e-Invites,” highlights Manas.
He shares a story where they helped a customer get used to the online search for planning his sister’s wedding. “The customer had a bad experience with an online purchase and was hell bent on coming and meeting us at the office to get the details instead of using our website. After a long convincing period we did his onboarding and finally got him using our website. He was so thrilled with the results that he called us and thanked the entire team for making his life simpler,” smiles Manas. He shares his vision to make Wedding Plz synonymous with weddings and become a one stop online shop for all wedding services and needs.
Wedding Plz is a 25 people strong team with seven people dedicated for product development. They have an in-house team to collect and curate their supplier data. The team procures vendor database from all over the country and also works on-ground to bring vendors on board. All the data on the website is verified with recorded phone calls to maintain accuracy and quality. The company is currently bootstrapped and is in talks with the investors to raise their first round. They will enter Bangalore and launch their mobile app by the end of this year.
Indian wedding industry is estimated to be USD 40 billion and is expected to grow at a rate of 25–30 percent year-on-year.
Local vendor search is a big market and wedding industry has approximately 40 different business categories required to plan a perfect wedding. Sanna Vora’s Indear, Justdial, Sulekha, Shaadi magic and Matrimony directory are some prominent local search engines in the industry. The fact that Indian weddings are getting grander and the couples fight for their own time, it is very likely that an idea like Wedding Plz will strike the right cord with the audience. For now, the team at Wedding plz has 1.5 lac registered users and are helping people say “I do” in tech style!