[Funding alert] Zuddl raises $13.35M led by Alpha Wave, Qualcomm Ventures

San Francisco-headquartered virtual and hybrid events platform Zuddlhas announced raising $13.35 million in a Series A round of funding led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) and Qualcomm Ventures. The round also saw participation from returning investors GrowX and Waveform Ventures.

This takes the total equity capital raised by the Y Combinator-backed company to nearly $15.5 million. 

Zuddl will utilise the fresh round to accelerate product development, growing its technology team and scaling globally with a focus on the US market, it said in a statement. 

Founded in May 2020 by Bharath Varma and Vedha Sayyaparaju, Zuddl offers enterprises design immersive brand experiences around virtual and hybrid events. The company’s clients include Microsoft , BYJU'S , NASSCOMand Google among others. 

“Zuddl’s growth can be attributed to enterprises' need for greater customizability and control for their virtual and hybrid events. Most of our customers are global companies with remote teams, who have complex use cases that we help solve easily, all the while being on-brand,” said Bharath Varma, CEO and Co-founder of Zuddl in the statement. 

Zuddl claims to have grown 30x since inception and offers a high level of event customisation and attendee engagement by offering interest-driven networking and gamifying user actions.

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Zuddl operates in the virtual events space which was valued at $94.04 billion in 2020 according to a report by Grand View Research. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 23.7% from 2021 to 2028, said the report. 

While Zoom and Microsoft Teams are among the popularly used tools by enterprises for Unified Communication as a Service, India has seen emergence of companies like Hubilo and Airmeet offering virtual, white-labeled platforms for large scale events.