While online platforms selling movie tickets have gained much popularity among movie-buffs, a humble startup is silently capturing a substantial share in the ticketing market and is quite a known name amongst college goers. TheCollegeFever is the first platform to have sold online a total of 4 lakh college event tickets so far. Gross Ticket Value earned so far exceeds Rs. 10 Crore. This is the go-to destination for booking events of IITs, IIMs and many prestigious colleges.
TCF helps plan, propagate and get sponsorships for college events, seminars and workshops. Very popular among college cultural groups and committees of major Indian institutions, the platform’s focus on its target audience – youngsters and college goers – is paying dividends. The startup has registered 100 per cent growth year on year, since its inception in 2016. That’s been a constant for last three years and remains the target for the year 2018 as well.
The reach and footprint of the Bangalore-based startup is also growing swiftly. From working with less than 1000 colleges in 2016, more than 2100 colleges now organise events and sell tickets through TheCollegeFever.
Talking about the growth story, Kushal Aralihalli, founder TCF said, “Our consistent strategic partnerships with prestigious college events of IIT Bombay, IIT BHU, IIT Rajasthan, IIM Bangalore, IIM Indore, NIT Tirchy and others prove that TheCollegeFever delivers value to college event organisers. Unlike other general event technology platforms, we have created a niche product that is customised to college event organisers. That’s our biggest asset,” added Kushal.
Funded by Mumbai-based VC 11.2 Advisors, TheCollegeFever raised $250,000 last year. “Being a strong believer of a good product, I allocated a major sum for product development. And the strategy worked. With a seamless UI experience, the platform has become a big hit amongst youngsters. Colleges are using the features on offer and creating some of the most-talked about campus events in the country,” added Kushal.
Speaking about how he founded TCF, Kushal said, “Attending events give you a lot of exposure, which I missed out during my engineering days. I never understood the importance. So I built this platform to provide an opportunity for students to attend the events of their own interest”. His biggest inspiration is impacting student life, and helping students to make informed decisions. “As a whole, TheCollegeFever is not just an event Ticketing company, we also strive to be a student’s personal companion throughout their academic life. Our objective is to be a guide, mentor and personal companion to students, and help them gain relevant information and knowledge – outside yet related to their course syllabus – that will help them get ahead of their peers”, he said.
Kushal’s biggest challenge however, lay in investements and building a team. Says Kushal, “In the ideation stage, I met a couple of investors and my biggest learning is that nobody will care about your product without any consistent traction. I went back, worked really hard and showed the traction. I’ve always communicated our achievements to our prospect investors on a regular basis”. Yet, he maintains that building a team was his biggest challenge, “Everybody has their own expectation and building a team with same passion is challenging”.
Looking at the future, the company aims to grow by another 100% this year. The growth is targeted to be reflective in all terms including the reach, number of events, revenue and profits.“What we have achieved so far is just 5%. The market is huge with 37,000+ colleges across India. We want to scale to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well. On the product development, we are working on features to engage our audience on a regular basis. A lot of user research has been done to provide various opportunities that add significant value to student life – both Professional and Personal”, Kushal said.
With almost 2100+ colleges partnered, 6000+ events organized and 4,00,000+ tickets sold since its inception, the startup is an undisputed leader when it comes to college events’ ticketing.
