Function Mania- A Demand and Supply Platform, Catering to Both, the Customers and Vendors Equally

“FUNCTIONS, bring families and friends closer is a myth, if not organised well, draw them far apart”

Organising a function these days, is more of a hassle and a societal demand than an expression of happiness and joy, be it a baby shower or a birthday party to a full fledged wedding. Thinking of putting up a function gives goosebumps and also horrifies you from within. But no longer, will you get stressed up with the name of “function”, when startups like functionmania.com are all set to simplify your lives and walk shoulder to shoulder so that the burden is equally borne by you and them. It all started when Ritwik Dang (Founder & CEO | Functionmania.com) was organising his wedding and what he gets to see a hell lot of wedding portals all set to lure him to come and hire vendors. He browsed the web, spoke to friends and folks, but nowhere could he get an option to find a verified list of vendors and it was just not the vendors but there were some major challenges that Ritwik faced which he firmly believes that people around would also be facing. There was no verified Vendor Database available in a comprehensive manner so that one can educate themselves and choose the best one according to their budget, no option of creating e -invite website for your family &  loved ones & no website where simply one can go and get suggestion for vendors that match their budget and fetch best deals without getting down with the tedious negotiation process..   

At the end Ritwik ended up visiting each and every vendor himself, studying their portfolio and analysing who all are the best amongst the lot, taking wishes over the phone from relatives and the website idea was no longer in his mind, because he had to coordinate and find the best of people for arranging stuff not only for the D-day but also for  various other pre and post functions around wedding. And this marked the beginning of functionmania.com, which is a one stop solution for all your function related vows be it  bachelor’s party to your wedding, your baby shower to your kid’s first birthday and so on and so forth. A platform which is trying to bring more sweetness into your relations by keeping you away from all the hassles of arranging to delivering a world class function, wherein you will get a reviewed verified vendor list with sixteen functional categories like Caterers, Photographers, Makeup artists, Decor planners and many more with their specific rack rates as per the size of the gathering you are expecting, an option to create your own personalised website with just drag and drop options, features like Photos section in which users can browse photos per category and see which vendor was behind the curtains basically letting people know how others nailed everything in their function to perfection, make your own personalised e-invites, share reflections of the functions with all your loved ones and receive sagan in case any of your family members living abroad are not able to make it for your wedding.

Apart from making the customers go “VOW”, FUNCTIONMANIA.COM has some spectacular and flawless features for vendors also, henceforth entering into a WIN - WIN situation from both the ends. Features like “GET A QUOTE”, “FUNCTION WEBSITE”, “VENDOR STREET”,  makes it an ideal platform for vendors to find numerous buyers drawing engagement. To ensure maximum footfall on the website they also have Features like ‘’PHOTOS’’ ,’’TRUE STORIES’’.  Not to forget that they would be running ‘’CONTEST’’ every month with exciting and expensive giveaways along with some  offline events.  A Vendor apart from displaying contact details can now with an ease of a click can create and showcase beautiful portfolio of works done in the past. For them it is just not wedding domain but more than that, catering to all sorts of functions and events which makes the portal draw loyal customers every now and then.

Upon asking about his venture’s differentiation factors, Ritwik says, “the existing portals in the market have their key focus area into wedding domain, however we wish to ease the hassle of every function of a user, be it a wedding or any other function. We have a very unique style of showcasing the vendor rack rates as per the gathering, so that irrespective of what function user is planning to host they can easily match the respective vendor with respect to their cost and the package inclusions with deliverables offered, thereby maintaining transparency”.

But all this was not easy, unlike other startups, Ritwik too had to struggle his way through to get the right kind of resources, right team, right technology associates which he believes is a part of his learning and is much needed in the startup phase so that one doesn’t end up making wrong decisions. Its been more than a year team Functionmania.com has been working on this idea and on July 1st, 2015 they launched the beta version of it. As Ritwik very rightly says “Hard Work pays off well, and gets more smile when it is in terms of customer satisfaction”, post releasing the beta version on 1st July, 2016...the traction on their platform has raised eyebrows, their current alexa rank stands at 22,000 in India while their views per post goes upto 3.2K with minimum 30 shares, more than 10000 unique visitors in the first 15 days resulting in a revenue aggravation of 17 lakhs till date from the the date of releasing their beta version. They are also on the verge of closing their seed round and will be very soon ruling the hearts and minds of people around, bringing more smiles and beautiful memories to share and laugh about.

Chitrakshi Suneja

BW Reporters This is Chitrakshi Suneja currently pursuing graduation and diploma in journalism and mass communication. She is crazy about Writing stuff on Startups, Entrepreneurs and reading as well.