Weddingplz.com is a wedding vendor discovery platform that houses everything that a to-be-wed couple needs to plan, manage and organize a wedding. From giving the maximum & most detailed information about vendors to helping the to-be-wed couples plan their wedding step by step, it is a one stop solution for all the wedding needs.
The Wedding Market
Though we have different festivities to celebrate, no celebration could match the wedding of a near and dear ones. Even during the festivals like Diwali, there are not many families that still have a get together, people might make plans with their friends on such occassions (blame it on the movie releases). In spite of all this, weddings are the occassion where the entire relative community meet up undoubtedly without any excuses. Every wedding, is measured by the grandeur it is accompanied with. The expenditures on any typical wedding begins right from the wedding invitation before the marriage, to the take away gift after the marriage. On an average, a wedding cost can vary anywhere between 5 lakhs and 5 crores (sometimes even more than that). The Indian wedding industry alone is at $40 billion and is expected to grow at 25 to 30% per annum.
Well, money is not the issue here. What matters is where do you find the value for the money spent. It requires different agents to be brought under one roof viz invitation, food, flower arrangements, bridal make-up, mehendi, musicians, decoration and so on (no wonder, weddings are a huge event management). Local Vendor Search is a huge market and wedding industry has approximately 40 different types of business’s required for that perfect day. Justdial, Sulekha, Asklaila, Askme, Shaadimagic, matrimony directory are the biggest names of Local Search Engines in India.
In a nation where wedding talks begin the moment a child is born to a clocking of approximately 100 lakh weddings a year, stems the need of a portal that helps people find every wedding product and service under the sun (and everything means EVERYTHING… under one roof!). That is why Weddingplz.com houses everything that a to-be-wed couple needs to plan and organize a wedding, all under one domain. From Real Weddings and inspiration to blogs and ideas, from reviews and deals to events and planning tools, their idea is to make weddingplz a one stop wedding planning destination.
[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=”600″]Weddingplz Facts:
Year Founded : Jan 2014
Cities Present In: Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ludhiana
Founders: Manas Wadhwa (Previous: Founder – Virtual Space Infotech, Co-founder – Bean Tree Hospitality), Prashant Kumar (Previous: Tech Lead – Zatse.in, PlaybillEdu)
Team Size: 25
Head Office Location: Delhi
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Whatever the type of Weddings, We Simply love them ! Check out our awesome video !
Posted by WeddingPlz.com on Monday, February 2, 2015
“Our plan is to make WeddingPlz synonymous with Weddings.”
Besides providing users, the maximum and most detailed information about wedding vendors; what makes Weddingplz.com unique is that it’s the only wedding portal that smoothly integrates everything that’s required to plan and organize a wedding into a single website thus helping the to-be-wed couples – search manage and organize everything for their wedding online.
With an array of features viz local vendor search, genuine couple reviews, upcoming wedding events, Vendor deals, Real weddings, to amazing wedding planning tools like budget manager, checklist, to-do list management, e-Invites; it is the most exhaustive yet comprehensive wedding search portal currently present in India.
The Wedding Planners
Manas: Founder & CEO
As the Co-Founder & CEO, Manas consistently leads Weddingplz into innovation and building a scalable business model. A non-technical person completely in love with technology, prior to finding WeddingPlz, he founded a Leading 360 Virtual Tour Co which is among the top Virtual Tour Company in India, and has some of the most coveted brand names under its client list viz. Max Hospitals, Amity University, Mercedes Benz to name a few. He has also co-founded an award winning chain of restaurants which was also the official Public Caterer to F1 formula Racing 2013.
Prashant – CTO
The Tech Brain behind WeddingPlz.com, Prashant holds his expertise in launch of various search portals and has more than 10 years of experience in tech lead domain. Zatse.in, PlaybillEdu, Kenyan Airlines automation for STPC are some of his major outstanding projects on the technical front. He takes care of the process optimization solutions and handles the coding, php structure and user interface structure at weddingplz.
The story of weddingplz itself was during a wedding in Ludhiana, the inconvenience caused to Manas Wadhwa in his cousin’s wedding, to find one good wedding vendor at the last moment in the vicinity of hotel, is what prompted him to explore the idea of a wedding portal. Seeing how easy it was to search for food joints on ‘Zomato’ and how difficult to search for wedding products and services on net, is what deepened his conviction to start working on this idea further and thus WeddingPlz.com was launched in January 2014.
Currently they are a team of 25 highly enthusiastic and passionate people, working day and night. The team at weddingplz endeavors to change the way weddings are planned and executed in India and aims to beat any other competitor that comes its way whether in terms of data or features or planning.
The Wedding Challenges
Being a startup they’ve faced their own share of new challenges everyday and overcoming them is an ongoing process. However their key challenges can be categorised into the following.
Single Point Consolidation Weddings encompass the maximum range of age groups and emotions involved. There are more than a hundred areas to take care of, all pertaining to different vendors. The key challenge was to bring all of this to a single point focus, a single point where all the users (the prospective bride and groom and their families organizing a wedding) and vendors can all come together and get in touch with each other directly and precisely, so that the wedding preparation can be done smoothly and easily with just a one click process.
Data Reliability Another key challenge came in the form of providing the most authentic, reliable and exhaustive vendor information to users so that once they log on to weddingplz.com, they don’t have to see or ask anybody else for more vendor details. So collecting, curating and updating the latest and most comprehensive data is an ongoing challenge for them.
Usability Challenge Understanding the target audience mind set (the To-Be-Weds and Vendors) and what they are looking for and then providing them with an easy to use and clean user interface so that they get what they are looking for without much digression and waiting was another key challenge. WeddingPlz is designed with a very methodical user interface so that the users can glide through the website features effortlessly thus saving on their time and effort.
Introduction to Online Aspect In India people are more comfortable doing everything physically, be it jotting down notes or haggling with 10 vendors to finalize one. The challenge comes in the form of introducing the Wedding planning online as it’s comparatively a new feature in India and not many people are using it or are comfortable with it (old habits die hard). WeddingPlz has a complete section of wedding planning tools where a user can create their own wedding checklist, budget, guest list and stay on top of everything all the time, without the hassle of physically doing everything. Marketing this idea and making it more acceptable to people is another key challenge faced by them.
The Wedding Journey
Irrespective of the difficulties faced, one can never forget the exuberance experienced in weddings. For weddingplz team, the journey is unforgettable (just like the weddings), and they thoroughly enjoy working on every aspect of the wedding, whether its getting in touch with newlywed couples for publishing real weddings and browsing through countless photo gallery images; or whether it’s taking out a blog about the latest wedding trend and tips, they just go for it; even the data listing for that matter has its own fun share as the data team while verifying vendor listings gets to talk to hundreds of wedding vendors everyday and sometimes they have good reasons to laugh while listening to the stories vendors recount amongst them. They have been getting great responses from both users as well as vendors side.
They get over 3 lakh visits every month, have generated 35000+ leads till date and have 105 paying customers as part of their early revenue stage, their current Alexa ranking is 1755. They also have 37500+ wedding vendors listed with them.
Just like how every wedding is an exciting affair, their excitement also stays in the “launch of weddingplz in a new city”! The entire planning that goes into it, from the teaser FB and other social media campaigns to the main ones, from data finalization pre launch to email campaign post launch, from active vendor interaction outside office to a mini party bash inside the office; that truly is an exciting and most awaited time for the entire team.
The Wedding Expansion
Expansion of WeddingPlz, both in terms of Geographic expansion and Product expansion is foremost on their agenda and they are aggressively pursuing it. Starting with Delhi last year, they have launched in 3 more cities till now, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Ludhiana; they have plans to launch in Bangalore by the end of this year. They are expected to go PAN India by the end of 2016.
In terms of product expansion they plan to launch Weddingplz mobile App by the end of this year and would be coming up with their very own wedding directory of wedding vendors, something that is unprecedented till now. Resolutely pursuing the above mentioned plans, the team expansion definitely will go parallel.
“Weddingplz embodies the vision and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture and now after having the right traction figures, we are looking for potential partners/financial assistance to raise funds.”
