KWAN Acquires Online Entertainment Marketplace Gigstart

One of India’s leading entertainment conglomerates, KWAN today announced the acquisition of the rapidly growing entertainment start-up Gigstart. The Company also announced the launch of a highly user-friendly mobile app. Gigstart is an online marketplace that facilitates swift and transparent connections between entertainers and event and party planners.

A first of its kind of booking service, Gigstart verifies and reviews all the artists before listing them on the site. The newly launched mobile app will further provide easy access to the various entertainment options, guiding party planners to the best-suited artists and connecting them - concluding with payment services and contract formalities.

Anirban Blah, Founder and Managing Director, KWAN commented on the partnership, “Today there exists a lacuna in a talent industry skewed in favour of known celebrities but lacking when it comes to capitalizing on creative talent from across the country. This gap is what Gigstart aims to fill with a platform that marries scale with sensible unit economics in a way that no other company does. Kwans acquisition of Gigstart makes it the first platform of its kind to have legitimacy and credibility in the industry.”

Vijay Subramaniam, Founding Partner, Kwan added, “There is a wealth of talent in India today from a singer in Raipur to the biggest Bollywood star but not enough real opportunities for them to reach out to audiences without going through a succession of middle-men. Gigstart is first of its kind dais to address this requirement and we hope to make it a home and community for talent in addition to building a sustainable business.”

Gigstart was conceptualized to fill the gap between a plethora of entertainment talent found across the country and consumers who are looking to curate events themselves. With the experience and vast network of KWAN’s vast experience behind them, Gigstart is poised to take advantage of the growing appetite of consumers in smaller towns and cities. By employing transparency and reliability to hire the best talent the process also eliminates impeding elements like black money and fixers. The launch signals the beginning of a unique process of event planning that empowers consumers to custom-make events as per their specific requirements – from make-up and mehendi artists to sound rentals, stand-up acts and celebrity appearances.

Since its inception, Gigstart has garnered considerable traction with over 4200 verified artists on board and growing. The convenient app interface enables users to browse through artist categories and book talent via their phones.

While Gigstart is a great tool for individual consumers to book talent, its large and varied roster, combined with the strategic alliance with industry leader KWAN makes it instrumental to event agencies, ad agencies, marketing professionals and also corporate bodies to book entertainment for events of any scale, large or small.

Gigstart Founder Atit Jain Explains Important Parameters For A Marketplace Startup

Atit Jain a BITS Pilani graduate, ex employee at JP Morgan and now the founder of Gigstart, a GSF accelerator funded first of its kind kickass marketplace from New Delhi, India that facilitates quick and transparent connect between entertainers and party planners shares his experience on the things to keep in mind while setting up a two sided marketplace.

He says two sided marketplaces often look easier to build than they actually are. There lies a classic ‘chicken and egg’ problem that one encounters. If supply exists then only demand will be created and if demand exists then only one can focus on providing the supply.

The success journey of a two sided marketplaces often works like an exponential curve with the tipping point much ahead in the journey than you can possibly imagine. That means one needs to work hard and do things in the right manner.

Below are the points that one should keep in mind while building such a marketplace:

1. Low Burn- Keep your cash burn rate as low as possible as it will take time to build a demand. One does not want to exhaust all their resources before one reaches the tipping point of their journey. Don’t overuse technology and don’t automate unnecessarily. Let your processes tell you what you have to automate and what can be automated.


2. Laser Focus- Focus on one problem and one geography at one time. You will recognize many parallels to what you are doing and it will seem logical to expand to more geographies to make more money. Resist this temptation till you have perfected your model.


3. Hustle and Hack- You will need to do a lot of hustling and hacking. These tricks are required in all the businesses but marketplaces need them more. At times, you would need to sell something you don’t have and find the actual supply, later.


4. Tougher side first- Supply and demand are the two sides of a marketplace. In most of the cases, one side will be easier to manage than the other. While you keep scaling up the easier side never equate the success of your marketplace to it. You will need to focus on the tougher side to scale up.


5. Trust, Ease and Fulfillment- These are the 3 basic qualities of any marketplace. There was a time when you could build a marketplace without fulfillment but I think in today’s world no new marketplace can be built without fulfillment and ensuring the process through to its completion eg Air BNB. The tough question to answer is- where do you draw the line? The answer can be found only over a period of time. Till that time, do not shy away from doing un-scalable things.