Bengaluru-based Events High, an events and activities marketplace has raised its first round of funding from Axilor. Having crossed 500,000 monthly unique visitors this month, Events High is a sought after market place for local events and activities. Launched in 2014, the company will use the funding to expand its organiser base and customise user experience on its platform.

Events, today, are an extension of one’s personality and preferences. They are much more than networking platforms. Consumers are looking for events where they get to experience something new and organisers are working towards creating unique offerings. Through its growing events and consumer base, Events High has integrated more than 3500 organisers in Bangalore alone and is now expanding its supplier acquisition efforts in Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai. The team is also ramping up mobile presence having crossed more than 200,000 app downloads.

“Customers value engagement & unique experiences and Events High is committed to curate these experiences and make them known. We currently have 3000 verified listings per city per month with 30% of this supply directly bookable on the Events High platform. We have a large base of monthly active users that has grown by 3x over the last 6 months,” said Nikesh Garera, Cofounder and CEO of Events High. He added, “With Axilor’s backing we will deepen interest and location based targeting that will allow organisers to fill in supply gaps. I am pleased to welcome Abhishek, cofounder and head of Product who will help enhance the platform with his experience.”

Abhishek Shrivastava recently moved to India from Google Mountain View and will be heading Product at Events High. He worked with Walmart Labs prior to Google. Events High is now a team of 4 co-founders {Nikesh Garera (CEO), Arvind Batra (CTO), Parag Sarda (Head of Mobile) and Abhishek Shrivastava (Head of Product)}. Nikesh, is an alumnus from Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins where he pursued his MS and Phd respectively. Arvind did his MS from Georgia Tech and he, along with Nikesh also worked at Kosmix which was later acquired and became Walmart Labs. Parag Sarda worked at Google and Walmart Labs and has an ME from Indian Institute of Science. Events High is now a team of 22 members.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman Axilor Ventures said, “The fascinating thing about event marketplaces is that these are transitioning into communities and thriving ecosystems. Events High is unique as it is more than a listing platform. Being deep tech enabled, it has the potential to change the way events are consumed by users.”

There is tremendous opportunity for online listing and booking of events in India. As per a FICCI-KPMG report around 10x of the event data in India is still unorganised/ offline. Most business happens via phone-lead models and Events High aims to change that by launching a new version of their organizer mobile app that goes well beyond managing ticket sales/leads to managing the entire workflow of the event or activity. This will also help organisers understand where the missing pieces lie.

Other players in the space include MeraEvents, BookEventz, Onspon.com and BookMyShow among others. In June 2016, Mumbai-based Onspon.com, an event-brand partnership platform, secured $150K (Rs. 1 Cr) in angel funding from Indore’s Swan Angel Network.
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