Explara

Explara is an online event ticketing and registration platform that helps event organizers manage event registrations, ticket collections and online marketing solutions. It offers an integrated event platform for registration, event community, membership and events apps to organize any kind of event, conference, webinars, fundraising and RSVP. Catering to the need of event organizers, Explara.com allows event organizers to create event presence online in couple of minutes. Catering to the attendees, explara.com enables them to purchase tickets to these events with utmost ease. Established in the year 2008, Explara is an India based company having presence in Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi as well. Internationally the company has partners located in UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Philippines and is optimistically planning to venture out to new places across the globe in near future.

The Idea

One of the Co- founders, Santosh conceived the idea while listening to a south asian radio couple of years back. An ad looking for venues for an event helped him stumble on the opportunity to tap the huge potential of online event ticketing and registrationsolutions. While working in online marketplace in the year 2009, he had set up a recruitment solutions company in Pune a year earlier. Intrigued by the opportunity, he asked his employees to check on upcoming events in India. Spotting a chance to diversify, he renamed his venture as Ayojak.com and launched an online ticketing and event discovery business. It was primarily launched as a venue and event listing portal, however owing to the strong interest from the event organizers for an ‘Event Registration and ticketing Solution’ the concept was revamped to cater to the increasing demand in the market.

Founders

Explara was conceptualized by Santosh Panda (CEO Explara) and co founded by Ashok kumar. Having done his masters at Manchester Business School, Santosh has worked with biggies like eBay, BBC Broadcast and UPCO. Ashok Kumar is the co founder and VP operations at the company.

Funding

The startup has raised seed-funding from a bunch of angel investors including Google India's RajanAnandan and early-stage venture firm Blume Ventures.In February last year, the company received an undisclosed amount in funding from Harvard Business School (HBS) Alumni Angels, Srijan Capital and Blume Ventures. Google India MD RajanAnandan and angel investor Kishore Warrier also participated in the round in their personal capacity. As per the agreement, HBS Alumni Angels’ co-founder Ravi Gururaj joined its board while RajanAnandan came in as an advisor.

Products

Started 5 years back, Explara has in place a cloud-hosted event solutions platform and focuses on four service areas—event ticketing/registration, payment processing (online, offline), merchandise selling, event marketing and logistics. One can create an account on Explara for free and organise free events without paying anything.But a nominal charge is applicable when organizer use the platform for a paid event/conference/meet-up. The Explara’s Apps Marketplace (in Beta stage) aims to extend apps and tools for pre-event, event-day and post-event’s end-to-end needs.

Competition

This online event management platform has competition from other ticketing platforms such as Bookmyshow and Kyazoonga. However, players in the ticketing business have different focus. These are direct and indirect competitors, some of whom are aimed at a niche audience such as music or sports etc. Bookmyshow for instance is into movie tickets while Kyazoonga on both sports and movies. There are international counterparts such as US-based Eventbrite whose gross ticket-sales for 2012 touched $600 million. While large companies, such as Ticketmaster provides ticketing for big concerts. Explara wants to tap neighborhood workshops, fund raise, parties, Bollywood concerts and other similar small to medium events.