The virtual events market to grow at 24% CAGR over the next few years
Zuddl, the all-in-one platform for virtual and hybrid events founded by Indian origin technocrats in May 2020, has closed US$13.35 million in Series A funding, led by leading investors Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), which is backed by DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform, and managed by Falcon Edge Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures LLC.
The round also saw participation from existing investors GrowX and Waveform Ventures.
The fund will be used to accelerate product development and scale globally, with a particular focus on the US market,” Zuddl CEO and Co-founder Bharath Varma said on 7 Jan 2022.
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,” Varma said.
Born in the pandemic, Zuddl was founded by Varma and Vedha Sayyaparaju in May 2020. The current round of funding will be used for geographical expansion, deepen its tech team, and further build on its offering.
Zuddl grew by over 30x since its inception and today has an enviable list of clients that include Fortune 100 and other fast-growing enterprises such as Kellogg’s, Microsoft, Dicks Sporting Goods, BYJU’S, Grant Thornton, and NASSCOM amongst others.
“Attendee engagement is a critical pillar of any event, in-person or virtual. With Zuddl, we are leveraging our experience of running in-person events and using technology to solve engagement and event ROI. While the world slowly returns to normalcy, Zuddl helps enterprises abstract the complexity from virtual and hybrid events and focus on their core,” said Verma.
The virtual events market space is expected to grow at about 24% CAGR over the next few years according to research firm, Grand View Research. As per LinkedIn’s research, event marketers anticipate that over 65% of the events in the near future, would be either virtual or hybrid.
Zuddl’s differentiation stems from its ability to deliver a high level of event customization, and powerful attendee engagement. Event organizers are enabled to customize every detail of their event quickly, and by themselves. Zuddl solves for attendee engagement by using technology to power interest-driven networking and implement gamification based on user actions.
“After being forced to go the virtual events route during the pandemic, enterprises are now discovering the advantages of hybrid events. Zuddl, through its hybrid-first model is tackling a unique set of problem for enterprise events – that of bringing customizability, control and engagement to virtual and hybrid events, without making it complicated for the event organizers. What works to Zuddl’s advantage is the fact that they are from the events industry and understand the ground realities too well,” said Anirudh Singh, Managing Director, Alpha Wave Incubation.
“Zuddl’s platform for hybrid events helps enterprises easily customize and manage events with greater engagement,” said Varsha Tagare, Sr. Director, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures. “We look forward to supporting their journey to enable new applications and immersive experiences for the events sector using XR, AI and 5G.”
“We were excited by the vision, strong expertise and speed of execution of Zuddl’s founding team. Bharath and Vedha make a well balanced and exceptionally talented founding team. Their deep understanding of the needs of event organizers, speakers, sponsor and above all the attendees coupled with their product first thinking has made Zuddl offering standout in a highly crowded space”, added Manu Rikhye, Partner, GrowX Venture.
Zuddl is an all-inclusive virtual and hybrid events platform, which helps enterprises design immersive branded experiences. Large organizations across the globe such as Google, Dicks Sporting Goods, Microsoft, Kellogg’s and Grant Thornton trust Zuddl to host their virtual events. For more information, please visit www.zuddl.com
Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) is a US$300 million venture fund, backed by DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform and managed by Falcon Edge Capital. AWI has a dedicated team across London, Bangalore and Abu Dhabi. The fund invests in early-stage tech-enabled, disruptive start-ups in India and Southeast Asia. In addition to providing outstanding founders with early-stage capital, AWI offers access to an unrivaled set of support mechanisms for business-building, while also helping companies expand globally and open up new markets in the GCC/MENA region and beyond.
DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform, was launched to accelerate the future of innovation. The platform offers productive incubation, investment and commercial scaling opportunities for tech start-ups in a state-of-the-art infrastructure for a digital led age. DisruptAD aims to advance R&D and unleash the potential of the UAE’s innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem through highly skilled tech talent.
DisruptAD is attracting and creating a thriving community of founders, fund managers, incubators, and accelerators to globally build, support and scale disruptive technologies from Abu Dhabi.
Falcon Edge Capital is a diversified global alternative asset manager co-founded in 2012 by Rick Gerson, Navroz D. Udwadia and Ryan Khoury. Falcon Edge manages approximately US$4 billion in assets across public and private markets. Falcon Edge has offices in New York, London and Bangalore. The firm offers a variety of investment products and strategies that cover a number of asset classes, themes and geographies.
Qualcomm Ventures, acting through Qualcomm Ventures LLC or its affiliated entities, has been making strategic investments in technology companies that have the potential to dramatically transform our world since 2000. As a global investor, we look to help entrepreneurs build revolutionary businesses that reshape the world around us. fiinews.com
