Online marketplace for wedding venues and vendors Weddingz.in has acquired Mumbai-based WedCraze, which creates private social platforms for weddings, for an undisclosed amount.
“Through this acquisition, Weddingz.in re-enforces its strategy to offer solutions to the millennial, adding stickiness to their platforms and more services under their umbrella,†the company said in a statement.
The acquisition will enable Weddingz.in—which is run by Mumbai-based L-Fast Brands Pvt. Ltd—to have a presence in the social space for weddings.
Owned and operated by PVRC Planners Pvt. Ltd, WedCraze was founded by two former executives of diversified financial services firm Nomura—Ruchita Choudhary and Pratik Vora.
The app acts as a single platform for all information and updates for a wedding where it connects the couple to guests, makes guest-management easier for the planner, and enables instant photo-sharing for the photographers and guests on social platforms.
Wedding planners can invite guests, create personalised e-invites, share details of the events, upload and share pictures with everyone in their private social platform. It creates a unique wedding ID which the guest can use as a password to enter the wedding.
Launched in January 2015 by Sandeep Lodha, Weddingz.in is a technology-enabled wedding planning platform that simplifies the process of finding and booking services at best prices.
It provides wedding venue recommendations and also connects users with wedding service providers such as photographers as well as makeup and mehendi artists. It started its operations from Mumbai and is now present in 12 cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru and Goa.
VCCircle had exclusively reported that Weddingz.in had secured nearly $1 million from Singularity Ventures with participation from its existing investor Sixth Sense Ventures.
In February last year, Weddingz.in had raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from consumer-centric venture fund Sixth Sense Ventures. In December 2015, it had raised $1 million in angel funding from a group of investors, including Google India’s managing director Rajan Anandan; filmmakers Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti and Ruchi Narain; fashion designer Ritu Kumar’s son Amrish Kumar; and Ambit Private Wealth CEO Hrishikesh Parandekar.
Other deals in the sector
The market for wedding-related services is estimated to be worth $40 billion in India, according to US-based venture capital firm CerraCap Ventures.
Over the last two years, a bunch of startups has emerged in the wedding planning space. Some of these ventures have also secured external funding.
In August 2016, Delhi-based online wedding planner ShaadiSaga raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round from ah! Ventures, People Group’s Anupam Mittal and other investors. FreeCharge’s Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, Dheeraj Jain of Redcliffe Capital and Rohit Chokhani of White Unicorn Ventures were among the other angel investors in the round.
In April last year, Mumbai-based Sitara Digital Ventures Pvt. Ltd, which runs wedding solutions portal The Wedding Brigade, raised Rs 4 crore (around $600,000) in pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures.
The same month, Wedwise Consultants Pvt. Ltd raised seed funding from StartUp Equity Partners.
In March 2016, media house NDTV entered this segment with the launch of wedding solutions platform Bandbaajaa.com.
In February last year, Hyderabad-based With Ease Technologies India Pvt. Ltd, which operates wedding services provider AppilyEver.com, raised $400,000 in funding led by Varun Aggarwal, founder and COO of Univariety.