Deal focus: India’s Hubilo rises from ashes

India-based Hubilo was founded in 2015 as a software provider for the traditional, offline events industry. That business got decimated with the onset of COVID-19 in February 2020. “We had two choices,” says Vaibhav Jain, Hubilo’s founder and CEO. “Either we let go of our existing employees, which numbered about 25, or we try to wing it one last time. We chose the latter.”

The mood was more excitement than desperation. Most of the team took pay cuts of 20-50%. They worked every weekend and reduced their usual sprint cycle from one month to one week. India was in lockdown, and everyone was working from home, reporting directly to Jain. New app features were being finalized on a weekly basis.

By March, the team had designed and launched its first product under a new virtual events-focused model. Revenue was a priority; the company was bootstrapped and had only about four months of runway. “It was a very good, calculated bet for us to decide we do not need to perfect our product to be first to market – we’ll just launch it and perfect it on the way,” Jain says.

The intervening 18 months have been a whirlwind. A seed round of about $4.5 million was raised in August 2020 and announced that November. Then, for the first time, customers started coming to Hubilo instead of the other way around. By February 2021, Lightspeed Venture Partners and UK-based Balderton Capital had provided a $23.5 million Series A round.

The money helped build out the team to about 300, with 200 of the hires coming in the past nine months. Between October 2020 and September 2021, the company grew 10.5x. This set the stage for a $125 million Series B this month led by US-based Alkeon Capital with support from Lightspeed and Balderton.

The capital will support an expansion of the sales team in new markets. About 25% of business is currently in Asia, which is considered a priority region going forward. However, there are plans to move headquarters next year from Bangalore to San Francisco, where much of the new senior staff is based.

Jain attributes the successful pivot to the company’s early years slugging it out in the pre-pandemic offline market. This experience brought significant context about the needs of various stakeholders, especially sponsors and exhibitors, which represent 80% of revenue in the industry.

“The space we were in was quite saturated. There were a lot of incumbents who had long-term contracts with their set of customers, so it was very difficult to break through,” Jain says. “As soon as COVID happened, all of those contracts went for a toss. The entire world became flat, and that created a huge opportunity for us.”

The new product prioritizes variety in user engagement, with about 15 different settings from professional lounge to music-filled banquet hall to gamified leaderboard. Exhibitors can install clickable logos that whisk away delegates to virtual sales booths. An analytics offering crunches the numbers on attendee behavior to help clients assess their return on investment.

Hubilo charges fees on an attendee basis, so its sales metrics provide some insight into soaring demand for virtual events. When virtual operations began, the company was pulling in $1,000-5,000 per client. That figure is now $25,000-50,000. To date, it has facilitated more than 10,000 events with two million attendees for some 800 clients, including the United Nations and Walmart.

There is also a strong focus on branding services, including engagement setting display options that allow clients to emphasize their company colors and voice. Hubilo considers this a key differentiator and competitive advantage – for now.

“We launched the brand element in November [2020], and I can already see a lot of people implementing that within their own solutions,” Jain says. “That will become a table stake feature moving forward.”

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• Topics
• Technology
• Support services
• Media
• Early-stage
• South Asia
• India
• Lightspeed Venture Partners
• TMT