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Events have become an important part of a company’s growth story. There has been a significant increase in the number of events, with the global corporate event market projected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2031, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5% from 2022 to 2031, according to Allied Market Research. 

However, the increase in the use of tools and tech has led to the problem of scattered data which hinders companies from gaining insights into their revenue and outcomes. Rather than offering solutions, many virtual event platforms contribute to the problem by creating silos for marketing and revenue. 

“Businesses have started prioritising event-led growth, however, data around events is still stored separately, making it challenging to effectively carry out event operations and assess the return on investment (RoI),” says Chameli Kuduva. 

To address this issue, Kuduva and her husband Hari Pragdish founded EventHQ in 2023 as an EventOps and intelligence platform to help enterprise companies make their event operations and marketing more productive.

The product and its purpose

Both event management and event operations are critical to the success of an event. While the former includes the entire process of planning and executing an event, event operations specifically refer to the hands-on management of logistical, staffing, and operational aspects during execution with careful planning.

Headquartered in Delaware, US, with an office in Bengaluru, EventHQ’s unified system ensures the unification of event data by streamlining information flow, automating engagement, and offering in-depth RoI analytics. It stands as an all-encompassing solution connecting revenue teams, marketing, and data in one place, facilitating collaboration and alignment via integrations.

“Managing events involves gathering scattered data from diverse sources, like forms, webinar tools, conferences, and spreadsheets. Bringing all this data together is a challenge many companies lack time and resources for, spawning the sales ops market. EventHQ aims to solve this by mapping all relevant event data points,” Hari Pragdish, Co-founder of EventHQ, tells YourStory. 

EventOps refers to the specific tasks and activities that take place during the execution phase of an event. It includes the hands-on management of various elements such as logistics management, vendor coordination, sponsor coordination, speaker coordination, attendee management, etc. 

“The challenge lies in the fact that events, such as mentorship programmes or conferences, are rarely run from a single centralised platform. For instance, when you have people providing their information through forms for a Zoom webinar, it becomes complex to track how many of those form submissions actually translate into sign-ups,” he adds.

EventHQ enables organisations to handle their event management, even though it is built for EventOps. Event management tools are designed to assist with tasks such as defining event objectives, choosing a venue, budgeting, marketing, registration, programme development, and logistics planning.

While the startup can assist with certain event management tasks, a complete event management strategy may involve a combination of tools to cover all aspects of planning, execution, and post-event analysis.

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Building a B2B SaaS community

Motivated by her passion for entrepreneurship, Kuduva founded SaaS Insider in 2020, a thriving B2B SaaS community that connects professionals in the industry. Under her leadership, SaaS Insider grew to over 10,000 members.

Meanwhile, Hari has four years of experience in CRM sales. Frustrated with the mundane data entry tasks, he started his first company—Supercharge—in 2021 (focused on CRM data entry), which was acquired in 2022. 

While at SaaS Insider, Kuduva engaged with the community through events, hosting three conferences attended by 1,000+ members each, 20+ webinars, and 15+ meetups over two years. She recognised the challenges faced by event organisers and enterprises, and the lack of data aggregation and defined processes in the industry, which no one had fully tackled.

“Eventually, we decided to start SaaS Insider as a blog, which quickly gained traction. Based on people’s requests and the growing interest in knowledge sharing, we initiated a Slack community. Our aim was to expand knowledge sharing, which led to the introduction of webinars with a strong emphasis on knowledge exchange,” says Kuduva, Founder and CEO, EventHQ. 

With the global economy shifting to virtual events during the pandemic, the team was keen on addressing the concerns of founders who were seeking advice and solutions for the new challenges they faced. 

“As we delved deeper, we realised that many of these companies managed their event data on Excel Sheets, making it challenging to measure the RoI,” she adds.

This is where EventHQ steps in to provide analytics and intelligence before the event, and after the conference, maps out all the revenue data, such as the amount of pipeline generated and the time it takes for pipeline deals to close. This approach provides both pre-event and post-event data, which is crucial for calculating the entire RoI. 

“We gather data from various sources be it Excel, Forms, Zoom, or any other integrated product. For example, we identify Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) attendees from the customer success tool and highlight the customers attending the conference as well as the prospects in attendance,” says Pragdish, adding that it will help in planning as well as prioritise contributing customers. 

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The road ahead

EventHQ recently raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding led by Powerhouse Ventures, with participation from three angel investors—Vijay Shankar, Arjun Pillai, and Karthik Ramamoorthy.

With 11 employees, the company plans to expand its team and focus on product development. EventHQ has also opened its waitlist and has onboarded a few early customers. It is looking to go beta in the near future. 

In the post-pandemic era, many marketing teams have witnessed significant bumps in their budgets owing to an event-led growth focus. This makes strategic planning and resource allocation more crucial for the success of these events.

“The post-event analysis will be a critical step in assessing the effectiveness and RoI of these increased budgets, making it imperative to make well-informed decisions about where to invest marketing resources,” says Kuduva. 

EventHQ’s current target market primarily focuses on enterprise-tech companies. While the startup says no other firms have comparable offerings, other players in the event management space include Hopin and Cvent.

“Over the next two years, we plan to concentrate on the tech market exclusively. This would allow us to establish a strong foothold before potentially expanding into other sectors,” she adds.