Digital venues: This startup uses VR technology to streamline event planning for businesses

The success of an event often hinges on a critical factor: finding the perfect venue.

In September last year, comedian and former The Daily Show host Trever Noah had to cancel his performance in Bengaluru due to a poorly managed venue where the audience complained of bad acoustics, poor seating arrangements, and even a lack of air conditioning.

Whether for corporate summits, celebratory occasions, or team events, many event planning firms offer an array of solutions when it comes to finding the right venue for their customers, however, they rarely use technology in venue discovery. 

Ex-PwC India Director Vishal Puri teamed up with his childhood friend Naveen Gupta, who drove campaigns for Google, Facebook, Nokia, and Ikea through his boutique event management firm, to introduce technology to the legacy industry. In 2020, they started Spalba, a B2B full-stack event management software that allows businesses to view digital twins of venues with the help of AR/VR technology.

"Today, if you want to book a hotel room, you can easily do so online. However, finding a venue for an event is much more complicated. You still need to call hotels and make physical visits. This challenge applies to not just users, but event planners across India and around the world," Naveen Gupta, Co-founder of Spalba, tells YourStory.

What does it offer?

Property owners often can only showcase their properties physically, however, there was a need to offer an immersive experience virtually for clients remotely.

“Unlike other industries, event planning lacked detailed data capture. We aimed to fill this gap by providing thorough information about venues. While physical visits are still necessary in most cases, we have had success stories from our clients who have reported great results. They have been able to close deals in hours, which would have otherwise taken days or even weeks,” Naveen says. 

Operating as a SaaS-enabled marketplace, Spalba streamlines event planning for enterprises, along with offering intelligent sales tools to help hotels increase their revenue from banquet and event bookings. 

The Gurugram-based startup offers features such as Event Mockup Builder which allows users to visualise and plan events by creating mockups of event layouts, setups, and designs. 

The platform provides a complete 3D virtual walkthrough of venues—from banquet halls, co-working spaces, and museum galleries—and visualisation of ceiling height, venue enclosures, and seating arrangements. It employs advanced laser cameras to capture precise measurements and spatial configurations, Naveen explains. 

“For example, if you want to know how to get from the lobby to the left of the swimming pool area, you can simply tell the system, and it will guide you through the entire process. The platform allows you to explore the property fully, helping you understand if it meets your needs,” he says, adding the sales teams of hotels or venues can easily showcase all these features to potential clients.  

The founder claims the platform has significantly reduced lead conversion times for businesses by accelerating the sales process and reducing the need for physical visits. 

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Future plans

Spalba remains bootstrapped, clocking Rs 40 crore in FY24. 

Its current revenue model involves charging a subscription fee to event venues, including hotels as well as corporate clients and planners. Over time, it will expand to include a marketplace component, Naveen explains. 

Currently, the platform has access to over 11,000 venues across 200+ Indian cities and aims to become a unified solution for venue search, collaboration, and event planning.

However, the company said it doesn’t currently charge most of the hotels and establishments on the platform for listing. The subscription fees are only applied when an event venue opts for the premium subscription, which includes venue digitisation and access to Spalba's full suite of technologies. To date, approximately 1,000 event venues across the country have been digitised.

"Initially, we broke it down into multiple steps—from discovery, exploration, planning, and finally, execution. We've mapped these four steps on the platform and used technology at every stage to make the process as easy and helpful as possible. We started this not just to solve a problem, but also to make a dent in the industry,” he explains. 

Spalba competes with other players in the market including Eventbrite, Peerspace, and Prolincur Technologies. 

Furthermore, Spalba ensures floor plan security by giving property owners complete control, allowing its clients to manage and approve sensitive areas such as those reserved for VIP hosting, which are blacked out in the 3D model. 

Before any information is made public, it undergoes rigorous client approval processes to ensure only authorised details are visible. Clients are also given access to a backend system where they can manage and update all the information displayed on the site.

Spalba’s target customers include event planners, corporate clients, agencies, and social event planners seeking venues for weddings and other events. On the supply side, it includes any property or space available for hosting events.

However, according to Naveen, convincing the customers wasn’t an easy deal. 

"The acceptance in the industry was very different when we first started. Convincing properties to be available online was extremely difficult. It took us nearly a year to secure just two subscriptions. And then suddenly last year, it moved to a hundred-plus subscriptions,” Naveen proclaims. 

A Mordor Intelligence report shows the Indian event management market will reach $5.23 billion in 2024 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.31% to reach $7.80 billion by 2029. 

The founder believes this increased acceptance can be attributed to a few factors. 

“First, there’s been a quicker adoption of online platforms, especially in the hospitality, events, and travel sectors, which are keen to establish an online presence. And obviously, looking at the levels of growth happening in the industry, people just want to do more by investing less,” he says. 

Spalba has boarded renowned hotels such as The Leela, Trident, Radisson Blu, and The Oberoi, among others, as its customers. 

The startup aims to broaden the platform's capabilities from visualising and planning events to also executing them directly at properties within the next 2-3 months.

“Going ahead, we plan on enhancing visualisation capabilities—both during property exploration and event planning. Secondly, we are advancing to integrate these capabilities into an augmented reality (AR) based app. This app will not only allow users to visualise properties but also guide them in real-time during events, providing navigation instructions within the venue itself,” says Naveen.

(The story was updated to correct a typo in the headline)