[Funding alert] Hubilo raises $23.5M in Series A round, to hire 150 people

Virtual event platform Hubiloon Wednesday said it has raised $23.5 million (over Rs 170 crore) in Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital.

The Series A investment round also saw participation from industry experts, including John Thompson, Chairman of the Board at Microsoft, and Chris Schagen, former CMO at Contentful.

The San Francisco-headquartered company, which also has offices in Ahmedabad and Bengaluru, had raised $4.5 million in October last year in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and a number of angel investors.

In a conversation with YourStory Media, Vaibhav Jain, Co-founder of Hubilo, said,

"We will use the latest investment to bring strategic, tactical, and technological advancements to our core product, integrations, and platform — allowing us to empower our clients and partners with more nuanced experiences and more in-depth intelligence with their events. This means our clients can leverage all the indispensable propositions of Hubilo much more effectively, much more significantly, and much more powerfully."

"We will also use the investment towards rolling out version 2.0, driving Hubilo's brand in untapped markets, and strengthening its position in the already established ones," he added.

The company had 150 employees in January this year, and now plans to scale this to 300 people by June.

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[Funding alert] Virtual event startup Hubilo raises $4.5M in seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners

Hubilo plans to hire in India and build on-ground teams in the US and the UK across sales, marketing, product, design, and finance divisions, Hubilo Founder and CEO Vaibhav Jain told PTI.

He noted that the company has been hiring for leadership roles and has onboarded senior executives for roles like Director of Design, Vice-President - Finance, Vice President - Talent, and Head - Product.

Talking about his plans for the future, Vaibhav told YourStory,

“Hubilo’s vision is to be the category leader in the virtual and hybrid events landscape; our seed round of funding was a stepping stone towards it, whereas our Series A round will help us in accomplishing this soon. With the new round, we will be establishing bases in the US and the UK, strengthening our leadership teams across marketing, sales, finance, product and design divisions, and launching Hubilo 2.0 in the next few months."

The company plans to build on its momentum by expanding its leadership teams globally, with new offices in San Francisco and London and a rapid build-out its sales, marketing, and customer success teams out of those offices.

The Series A funding will also be used for tech innovation as the platform rolls out several features to enable stronger attendee engagement and new monetisation opportunities for organisers.

"We are thankful to all our investors for believing in us and our vision and look forward to a very collaborative relationship with them,” Vaibhav added.

Hubilo has seen its witnessed revenue expand significantly as in-person events gave way to digital ones.

Hubilo has seen its revenue grow by 50 percent month-over-month since enrolling the first customer for its virtual events platform in April 2020, the statement said.

"Our strategy, product features and platform intelligence are expanding the possibilities of what is achievable in the events space, and we are continually delivering greater value for event organisers, sponsors and other stakeholders," Jain said.

(Disclaimer: Additional information has been added from PTI for context.)