07 Mar 2018

Startup pitch: Springlr brings buddy element to the event planning landscape

Eventbrite, the dominant events app, may have spritely competition from a new start-up: Springlr.

While Springlr offers similar event planning and promotions features, it adds a “dating” feature to the mix by helping people find someone to go to on adventures with them.

Here’s a clip:

What problem does your business solve?

We are trying to solve two pain points people normally face:

1. A platform which provides them all the events such as trips, sports activities, marathons, concerts, meetups, conferences happening around. If they are interested in any of them, how would they attend it? Where they can get the tickets, how many people are attending it, what all activities or arrangements provided by the organizers.

2. Imagine planning a trip, but no-one is there to accompany you. How about planning with some random stranger for a new kind of experience. How about hosting an event of your own and letting others to be part of it. How about selling tickets online?

Names of founders, their management roles, and a number of full-time paid staff?

Founding team consists of Kamlesh Meghwal and Divya Meghwal.

Kamlesh is a CTO/Co-founder and takes care of technical part while Divya is a Co-Founder and takes care of operations and social media management.

Bhaben takes care of digital head while Tia takes care of content writing for blogs. We have a few interns who are working on app development.

Funding arrangements?

Springlr is bootstrapped right now with initial fundings from Kamlesh which is sufficient enough to grow the company in the initial phase.

We are open to investments.

Revenue model?

Springlr charges fixed charge of 1% of the ticket price for each booking. We have other revenue model lined up and are in process of validating them.

Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?

Obviously, if an organizer is hosting an event, he/she expects it to have large user engagement. Our platform will provide them with that user engagement and in turn, if we charge 1%, then that will not affect their business compared to the ROI that we are giving them. Any event in the world needs users to be successful and we will provide them with that user base. Apart from paid events, we also provide them with an option to have free events which increase our organizers trust in us.

External validation?

We just released our beta version which allows people to host a free event on the platform and we started getting a lot of traction. We are doing a pilot run on a lot of users and are getting a positive response from everywhere.

We start getting noticed by some of the biggies without any marketing and are willing to tie up with us, which makes it a unique on its own. Kamlesh has more than five years of experience working with early stage startups which is a huge plus for the company. He brings in lot of expertise and skills to the team. Divya has a marketing background which will help in expanding.

tnooz view:

Eventbrite is so dominant in this space that it’s going to be difficult for Springlr to find a gap in its coils. If they play up the “event buddy” aspect or find a better way to boost the signal of paying event organizers they may have a shot.  

Or, perhaps Springlr could take a shot at being a regional events platform and capture and cater for one territory really well.

The price point will be attractive for some although others may question whether Springlr, as a newbie, can drive high user engagement, with that revenue model.

We wish it luck and will be watching for updates.