India virtual events platform gets $35m Series B
Airmeet, a US-headquartered and Asia-focused virtual events platform with extensive operations in India, has raised USD 35m in Series B funding featuring Sequoia Capital India.
Prosus Ventures, Sistema Asia Fund, RingCentral Ventures, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, DG Daiwa Ventures, and Nexxus Global came in as new investors. Accel India re-upped.
Sequoia India led a USD 12m Series A in 2020 with support from Accel, Redpoint Ventures, Venture Highway, and Global Founders Capital, a German VC firm. Accel and AngelList India led a USD 3m seed round earlier that year.
Airmeet’s key offering is marketed as a ballroom-style “social lounge” with freely accessible virtual tables for serendipitous encounters and a speed networking lobby where participants can spontaneously meet and make new connections in 1-5 minute increments.
The platform accommodates conferences, webinars, and trade shows of up to 100,000 participants, as well as events such as ice-breakers, workshops, hackathons, or cultural festivals. Clients include Shell, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart, Volvo, Philips, Accenture, Forbes, FedEx, Viacom CBS, Zeta, and Flipkart.
“The global market for virtual events has grown to become a USD 110bn opportunity aided by the new realities of work, networking, and marketing,” Sumit Jain, a senior partner at Sistema, said in a statement. “Airmeet with their acclaimed superior product delivering a near offline-equivalent conference experience is placed well to tap into this major paradigm shift in the global conferencing market.”
Airmeet was launched in 2019 by Lalit Mangal, Manoj Singh, and Vinay Kumar Jaasti. All three are former executives of VC-backed CommonFloor, an Indian classifieds website that was acquired by its larger counterpart Quikr in 2016 for about USD 200m. Mangal was also a co-founder of CommonFloor.
There are about 300 employees across India and North America, compared to 65 at the time of the Series A. The company claims recurring revenue has increased 24x since the Series A and is currently growing at 30% month-on-month.
Last year alone, it helped more than 120,000 event organisers stream 150m minutes of video airtime globally. Historically, India has been the lead market in the region, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and Japan.
The Series B will be used to expand the global footprint, invest in R&D, and scale the go-to-market strategy. This will include a focus on improving the visibility of the brand in various markets globally.
Competitors in this space include India’s Hubilo, which had staged more than 10,000 events for clients such as Walmart and the UN as of a USD 125m Series B in October last year. Asia accounts for about 25% of Hubilo’s business, but there are plans to expand its footprint in the region.
More on North America
Latest News
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...
Singapore fintech start-up LXA gets $10m seed round
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has led a USD 10m seed round for Singapore’s LXA, a financial technology start-up launched by a former Asia senior executive at The Blackstone Group.
India's InCred announces $60m round, claims unicorn status
Indian non-bank lender InCred Financial Services said it has received INR 5bn (USD 60m) at a valuation of at least USD 1bn from unnamed investors including “a global private equity fund.”
Insight leads $50m round for Australia's Roller
Insight Partners has led a USD 50m round for Australia’s Roller, a venue management software provider specializing in family fun parks.