There are numerous events happening right around us, be it related to home decors, educational melas, job fairs, business expos, etc. The fundamental idea is to connect people with similar interests, and promote mutual growth between businesses. In a recent report, the events and trade show market has been found to have close to five million meetings and events on a yearly basis. The reports suggests that close to USD 500 billion is being spent on the same. Emobitise, in its recent study, found that 79 per cent of its 931 respondents saw events as important to their business. It is therefore easy to understand why there are several big global names in this space – Eventbrite, DoubleDutch and Cvent. In addition almost every B2B website has it’s own event publishing platform for promoting global business events.
Though events are one of the best platforms for business and trade, they are considered to be poor Return on Investments (ROI), due to the fact that with a lot of event information on web, Event attendees are not able to choose the right events to suit their business interests, also couldn’t spot the right exhibitors to help grow their business. Event exhibitors find it difficult choose the right event to display their products and services. The Event Managers do not have value adding services for event exhibitors and attendees. This makes the events less accessible, and they fail to get advertising and/or exhibition revenue. So, how do we choose the right events then?
“The social media platform for event managers, exhibitors and attendees”
It is the aim of Goevnts.com to allow various parties to interact with each other and in turn increase their ROI by dealing with right partners. It is a comprehensive business events database of 900+ events spread over 50 industries, cities and countries around the world. The website gives the ease of reaching an event by type, industry, date, city, country and venue. The portal gives the events and exhibitors a better reach to their target audience and also guide attendees to choose a right event.
There are many event based websites, B2B portals around the world who publish business events but Goevnts uniqueness is in its post-event (after event) coverage which gives the event managers an improved brand image and loyal exhibitors and attendees. In short they give complete media solutions to an event which is more effective than traditional advertising solutions and help event managers get loyal clients for their recurring events. They also stand out from their competitors by coming up with a tailor made app for exhibitors and targeted users, which is one of its kind.
The Event Manager
Goevnts.com was solely found by Murali Krishna, an engineer by profession. He has experience in design of electric motors and vehicles, where he happened to exhibit and attend many events in India. When he moved to Shenzhen China, he had the opportunity to attend some global events there and he initiated his first green event management company EVHUB.in. It gave him the thought to integrate all his learning, experience and network. Thus came up with “Goevnts”, an ideal platform for global event managers, exhibitors and attendees.
Goevnts.com was started in August 2014 but actual operations started from January 2015 after web platform was done. It is mainly concerned in creating a handy mobile app platform to help event attendees, event managers and exhibitors while simultaneously adding more value adding to their business activities.
Under his expert mentorship, Goevnts.com is presently a team of five. Three in India and two in Shenzhen China. The team in India takes care of content development, and the one in China take care of branding, online reputation building, media relations, marketing.
“It was the passion that kept me going”
During the initial stages, Goevnts was run single handedly by Murali Krishna. Some of the challenges he faced can be pointed as.
- Initial market study on variety of online event portals, getting portal ready, finding a right development partner to customize the portal which is in current shape with all important features for helping the event ecosystem growth.
- Extensive travel to major events to implement goevnts unique feature live-event and after-event coverage, writing and publishing articles on exclusive event, exhibitor reviews.
He tried to solve all the obstacles either himself or found cost effective service providers to solve it. The take away when starting a startup single handedly, is not only the challenges that a person faces, but also the concomitant solutions he was able to arrive at, that prove to be a real learning experience. Goevnts might be just eight months old now, but they had an exciting learning phase so far. For instance,
- The way of running a bootstrap startup with utilizing every penny effectively.
- They have been learning every day from each and every event they update and review.
- Hiring passionate part-time interns is no less than hiring full time employees. This is a great learning and Goevnts team is proving it.
The Events Scheduled
Within 7 months of operation, Goevnts already listed 900 global events spread over various industries and geographies. They partnered with 30+ events and 10+ event managers globally as their official media partner. in India, China, US and other Asian event hubs.
They are currently working on development of mobile app tailor made for specific events with their partner company in India. They expect their demo app to be ready by mid next month. This will help them to transform themselves from service providers to product company. They are also planning to hire more members in India, China, U.S.and Europe to to start their sales operations and cover major events around most part of the world.
They are still too young to look for funding, especially when their virtual work environment is keeping their overheads safe. There are no external funding required to grow in the same pace, but as their idea is to scale up their event coverage operations, they are certainly looking for angels to support and provide right mentorship. They are also looking for partnerships related to incubation of their startup, product development, product sales and marketing activities.
