PlanningWale: A Startup Consists of All the Vendors and Service Providers in the Wedding and Event Industry
PlanningWale was founded in May, 2015 by Kanishk Pandey and Latika Malhotra. The startup has two business units:
PlanningWale App: It is one of its kind Celebrations App in India which helps users to plan all their special moments like Weddings, Birthdays, Parenthood, Anniversaries, and Bachelor parties etc. at their fingertips. The app has a database of more than 30K verified vendors from across India. The idea is to bring vendors & customers on one platform.
Also, the startup has great services lined up for its users that it will be launching very soon.
PlanningWale eCommerce: PlanningWale has done a soft launch on Facebook to venture into eCommerce space. The idea is to sell party products for all special occasions like Weddings, Anniversaries, Birthday parties, Bachelor parties etc. It has started with Wedding & Fashion Jewellery to test the waters and achieved a great milestone when the venture was able to sell 1000 product units within 3 weeks of Facebook launch. Its differentiation is quality at affordable prices & packaging. The company send its products in its beautifully customised boxes to make its customers feel special.
“We would be going live on our website in a week for our eCommerce venture,” Kanishk said. “Our idea is to consolidate our App & Ecommerce business and make PlanningWale a ONE-STOP platform for all your party requirements.”
PlanningWale was started when Latika was planning her own wedding, she found it difficult to find vendors online. The data provided by few websites was scattered & wasn’t user-friendly at all. “We realised the customer need. As a customer I would want everything at one place at the ease of my finger-tip. We did our market research & realised that there’s no mobile app helping users to find vendors on the go. That’s when we decided to form a company which can help users find vendors according to their specifications. Eventually, we realised that not just weddings but all special moments can be covered and we changed from Weddings App to Celebrations App,” said Latika.
The startup claims that it is one-stop shop to help users in planning any event in their life. Apart from planning, it is integrating eCommerce so that people can buy party products from the same portal. The company sell unique products from various Karigars from all across the country in a very unique packaging.
It is providing user friendly services. For eg: Vendors on the go, Maps to locate vendors etc.
Not only users, PlanningWale trying to help vendors as well. The startup is equipping vendors with more & more technology and do free social media promotions for them.
The firm has not looked to raise funding currently. It is scaling up and exploring more and more avenues to venture into.
“We would welcome if anybody shows interest in what we do and if he / she would like to invest their money or time with us,” Kanishk mentioned.
Its app services are free. Currently, the firm is looking to monetise from its eCommerce business. The company is also coming up with premium services on its app which will be very helpful to its users and vendors for a very nominal charge.
When PlanningWale was setting its business then it faced two major challenges: Limited Funds & Limited Workforce.
“We took the conscious call of not taking up funding for the simple reason that we wanted to run it on our own for some time before scaling it up. So, our funds are limited & we have to maintain our quality standards as well, Kanishk added. “Finding the right person to work with us was another challenge. We needed someone as enthusiastic as us. They are hard to find and even difficult to retain because of the competitive hiring by big startups.”
PlanningWale’s app has around 20K app downloads with a stunning Average user time. The average time user spends on our app is 11-15 minutes. The company is doing on an average 60 orders a day through Facebook. The firm has roped in more than 50 premium clients for its upcoming services in Delhi NCR. Also, the startup is launching its eCommerce portal very soon. The startup said that its premium services will be a game changer for it.
The events industry is over $40 billion & currently the players are very less. Moreover the entities which provide quality services are even lesser.
“Event management is a vast space which will accommodate any number new entrants for the next one year at the least. They should not get scared by the healthy competition by other startups. It is infact necessary. Competition helps us keep a check on our own performance too,” said Kanishk.
