The chandeliers falling like a cast of diamonds from the ceiling, the lights reflecting on the goblets of champagne, the lilacs and lilies in yellow, pink and white welcoming the brightness of the wedding and the bridesmaid walking behind the bride glistening with grandeur and grace. Amongst the many epithets which make India a colourful nation, wedding is regarded as one of the most auspicious events. Whether in parachutes or private jets, the Indian wedding market is making its position everywhere.
According to a report by Business Insider, the wedding industry is estimated as over Rs. 100,000 crore and is growing at 25-30% annually. The estimated cost of a wedding with no expenses spared could be between Rs. 5 lakh to Rs. 5 crore, in India. In January 2015, the wedding planning industry was pegged at $ 40 billion.
Founder and CEO of
The Wedding Brigade, Sanna Vohra inculcated the idea of having an one stop wedding planner right after her graduation from Brown University. When a close friend’s sister was undergoing her wedding ceremony in India, Sanna started to understand innumerable intricacies of planning a wedding – from mehendi and music to having hundreds of chairs draped in fine cloth to array of food serve which must only make rounds at the right time.
At the age of eighteen, Sanna began her first entrepreneurial venture while studying for her graduation in Brown University. Later, she also worked as an analyst for the Global Capital Market department at Morgan Stanley, New York City.
In April 2014, Sanna started Indear.in which became a one stop wedding solution for Indian weddings. Later she transformed the name to The Wedding Brigade. Sana is of the opinion, “‘The Wedding Brigade’ represents a group of people – family, friends, vendors, and the company itself – coming together to make a dream wedding a reality. The name change reflects the company’s growth from a wedding inspiration website to a comprehensive wedding solutions portal where users can find inspiration, buy products, and book services for their weddings, all in one place”.
Sitara Digital Ventures Pvt Ltd, which runs The Wedding Brigade which enables users to book venues, hair and make-up artists and mehendi artists online, or through its free expert concierge service. The platform launched its services in Mumbai and Delhi with a variety of categories for photographers, caterers, jewellery and ethnic wears and more. It will soon expand to other cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai.
In a pre-Series A round of funding led by Blume Ventures, with the participation of four other angel investors, The Wedding Brigade raised Rs 4 crore (around $600,000). The Mumbai-based startup plans to invest the funding into product enhancement, service, growth activities and talent acquisition.
When asked about how the startup intends to use the investment, Sanna says, “This round of funding gives us the necessary resources to scale our model at an accelerated pace. With our new brand identity, we are poised to make deep in-roads into our country’s high-growth wedding market”. She further adds that destination weddings are getting more exotic, with many weddings happening in Turkey, Europe, Sri Lanka, and more remote destinations in India.
Besides assistance in planning the wedding expenditure, the company aggregates content, products and services directly from wedding vendors and designers, and organizes it in an innovative manner in order to simplify the wedding planning process.
There are a few other Indian startups functioning in the wedding industry. 7Vachan, BandBaajaa, Wedmegood, Shaadisaga, Bollywoodshaadis are a few to mention within this sphere. It was reported earlier that, Gurgaon-based Wedmegood raised Rs. 2.7 crore from Indian Angel Network and Shaadisaga had also raised funding from Outbox Ventures.
Guest Author
Anisha Aditya leads editorial initiatives at BW Legal, which is the legal publication of BW Businessworld. She is a Management Consultant with specialisation in International Business Strategies, assessment of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements between countries, the impact of preferential access on industries, and global value chains for private companies and governments. She has also assisted in framing state export strategies.
