Lightspeed joins $125m round for India virtual events platform

US-based Alkeon Capital led the round, which included support from UK-based Balderton Capital. Lightspeed and Balderton led a $23.5 million Series A earlier this year. It brings funding in the past 18 months to $153 million.

Hubilo is touting the investment as one of the largest yet in its category, signalling how uncertainty about COVID-19 variant has continued to disrupt the traditional conferences industry and office work environments.

VC investment in this space includes a $12 million Series A last year for US-based and Asia-focused Airmeet provided by Sequoia Capital India and Accel Partners among others. Much of the thesis was based on advantages versus offline events in accessibility, scalability, and efficiency.

“In the future, most in-person events will definitely have a flavor of virtual participation, but virtual events, as a category, will grow big enough that we'll be developing deeper, native formats to support a variety of online events and interactions,”, Airmeet CEO Lalit Mangal told AVCJ at the time.

Hubilo was founded in 2015 to build tech for increasing attendee engagement at in-person events and saw revenue go to zero when the pandemic hit in 2020. Instead of declaring bankruptcy, it revamped its technology within a 26-day period to offer a large-scale communications and events platform.

The company has supported more than 10,000 events with two million attendees for some 800 clients, including the United Nations, Walmart, Enterprise Singapore, and Maersk Shipping. Asia accounts for about 25% of business, but there are plans to expand its footprint in the region, including Singapore.

The fresh capital will be used to develop new business functions and products while increasing headcount by 150%. The staff buildout will focus on an India-based design team and go-to-market teams across Asia, the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

“Businesses spend over one trillion dollars of direct spending on events. In the last couple of years, 15-20% of the enterprise events budget has permanently moved to digital events,” Guru Chahal, a partner at Lightspeed, said in a statement. “Hubilo is one of the fastest-growing and innovative platforms serving this market. I expect in the next few years that Hubilo will be broadly acknowledged as a market leader.”

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