MeraEvents to raise up to $5 mn to go global

Company already bootstrapped since last four years, including $200,000 raised from friends and family in US

Versant Online Solutions, a Hyderabad-based technology company focused on the events industry, is in the process of raising a venture capital fund of between $2 million and $5 million to take its event promotion and ticket-selling platform MeraEvents.com to the global markets.

The company is already bootstrapped since the last four years, including $200,000 raised from friends and family in the US.

“Now that we have good traction in India, we are planning to take MeraEvents to the next level. We have appointed an investment banker to scout for investors. We are currently in initial discussions with a couple of VCs and a deal is likely to be sealed in the next six months,” Chennapa Naidu Darapaneni, founder and chief executive of Versant Online, told Business Standard.

A spin-off of Oracle retail solutions provider Versant Technologies, which was acquired by Chennai-based IT firm Aspire Systems in November 2013, Versant proposes to utilise the VC fund to expand MeraEvent.com’s presence to West Asia,  Singapore and Malaysia by July, besides marketing and upgrading its technology platform to suit the overseas market.

Floated in 2009, MeraEvents caters to six categories of events — professional,  entertainment, trade shows, college, spiritual and training programmes. While the entertainment segment accounts for 50 per cent of MeraEvents’ revenues and 40 per cent from professional events, other categories constitute the remaining.

Darapaneni said MeraEvents had sold 10,000 tickets of various events during 2012-13, which translated into Rs 3.6 crore in revenues.

“We have been adding 2, 000 events to our portal every month since last year, as against 400 events a month in the previous year. Given the maturity in the events market in India, and also the increasing levels of adoption from users, we expect to sell 20,000 tickets (or Rs 6 crore in revenues) during 2013-14,” he added.

Stating that the company had identified some gaps to be filled within the events industry,  including data on venues, Darapaneni said they had been developing a new platform  christened venues.meraevents.com aimed at providing the entire data of venues available across the country.

“The new platform will be rolled out sometime during this April. Our idea is to cover up to 10, 000 venues by the launch, and touch 100, 000 venues by” he said.