Meraevents.com: Events and Trade Fairs Information just a Click Away Date:   Tuesday , December 01, 2009 In the age of Internet, it is still a humongous task to receive information on various events happening around one’s city. One can access information on any significant event or conference only through newspapers or magazines, or by phone call or email from the organizers. The participation time is either too short or the information available too less to enable important and timely decision-making. Although websites do try their best to provide information on a given industry related happening, the key takeaway from them is inadequate, not consolidated, or sufficiently comprehensive. MeraEvents.com was launched with the singular purpose of filling this yawning gap. Naidu Darapaneni, Founder and CEO, Versant Technologies, launched this Web portal to provide an insider’s view on any events, conferences, exhibitions, or trade fairs coming up in India, making it the one stop guide for organizers, delegates, and service providers. Launched in October 2009, the Hyderabad based MeraEvents.com is the first Indian Web based, end to end portal completely dedicated to events, conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs. From finding event information to registering for the event and allowing organizers to publicize the event, it offers many unique features attempting to enhance the possibilities for the end users. “Our Web portal is first of its kind as it provides easy to use and important information to the people connected to the events industry. Although other available websites do provide information on events around India, their focus is too skewed or narrow. So, this offers us the distinctive edge which is imperative to drive value to our customers.” says Darapaneni. The idea to start a portal on events information struck Darapaneni when he returned from the U.S. two years back. Having started Versant Technologies (the parent company in U.S.) in 2000, he had planned to start the company operations in India. “I wanted to understand the Indian market in order to set up business here. The easy way to understand any market is through attending various industry related events. But the glaring information lapse on the Internet on events and trade fairs in India gave me enough fodder to build upon MeraEvents.com.” he explains. The real challenge was to implement the idea and bring it into realization. We carried out an extensive market research, which revealed that on an average a professional attends 4-5 events in a year and in almost 50 percent of the cases, he usually comes to know of important and interesting events only after they are over. Awareness, if any, is created by the event organizers calling them up or by word of mouth. The potential market for the idea was high and we teamed up with two other people and started developing the website. But six months into the project, we realized that we had developed the product on the wrong technology platform and had to scrap the entire project and start anew. From Drupal, content management software, the website had to be moved to LAMP (SQL, PHP, and so on) platform. “We built it from scratch; taking it from the idea stage to the validation, prototyping, and then to the full fledged product. It took us a year and a half to complete along with the rigorous testing, which was a major part of the whole offering,” explains Darapaneni. A very user-friendly portal, MeraEvents.com provides information on events that are completely organized, industry focused, and gives free access to the attendees. The portal has been designed with user driven content management and works end to end without any manual intervention. An event organizer or event-related-service-provider can post details on a particular seminar or event, publicize it, and whenever someone registers for the event allows him get an alert about it with the attendee details. Even users who look forward to attend an event can directly register themselves for it via the website and connect with the organizers. Since the website is in its initial days, currently a small team works on gathering event information. Currently MeraEvents.com is at a pre-revenue stage and there is a plan to eventually charge organizers for advertising, ticket sales, and for running the marketing and promotional activities of the events on the site. At present, organizers can post their events in the website for free. The idea of MeraEvents.com is very new for event organizers and not many are comfortable using a service like this due to inefficient IT skills. So, for some time the challenge will be to convince event organizers to buy into the idea of using our services. Our team has already rolled out an extensive marketing strategy. “We have an adequate outreach on the new media space, with our own LinkedIn page, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. In parallel, we are running ads on Google and Facebook, and have our Google SMS channel, blog, RSS feeds, and more. In the offline world we have come up with road lollypops and some direct marketing at various events. We also do product showcases at various conferences and trade fairs such as TiE-ISB Connect 2009 and NASSCOM Product Conclave, which improved our branding perception many fold,” Darapaneni says. Once the website takes off completely and starts generating revenue, plans are in place to spin it off as a separate entity as this business model is not aligned with Versant Technologies, which is a software development and consulting services company. “I am quite bullish about MeraEvents.com, and in the long run I plan to launch a multitude of services for both the organizers and attendees in order to make the channel between them clear and convenient,” he explains. There are several ideas to compliment the scope and nature of this work. Tying up with different service providers, providing event organizers quick and efficient services, launching a classifieds section that would cater to the needs of the events industry, and bringing in new technologies like RFID for quick monitoring of attendee information by organizers on the spot during an event to arranging logistics such as travel and lodging services for attendees, are some of the immediate plans to be implemented. We also plan to set up live webcast of events via MeraEvents.com so that people who are unable to attend an event can still access it via the Internet. The events industry in India is robust and is projected to be about Rs. 1,500 crore, which includes events, conferences, weddings, and entertainment. Of this, the events alone contribute about Rs. 400-500 crores. With a market as big as this, Darapaneni’s gamble on MeraEvents.com surely seems to be a worthwhile bet just waiting to spread its wings.