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About the company

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WedHaven is an events tech startup focused on simplifying the management for the Big Fat Indian wedding. It provides an App, Web & WA based experience for the operators (hosts, vendors etc) as well as the guests invited to the wedding and uses tech to smooth out the day to day operations of pre-wedding and during wedding management.

Mission is to help reduce the manual and monotonous tasks involved in managing a wedding by introducing technology in a field currently devoid of it. The efficiency introduced by the tech will help save time, save money and lead to higher guest satisfaction.

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Core Value Prop: Guests & Logistics management - Being able to upload & manage guest lists, collect information from guests automatically over multple channels, updating their stay, pickup, dropoff information and having it all being notified at the right time via the right channels.

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All offerings : Everything else is built around the current CVP to either simplify things for the hosts or improve the guest experience, we have -

• Guest lists: Guest lists are the first step toward our CVP above. You can add guests via multiple methods - Import contacts from phone or Import excel sheets or add manually. Once the guests are added the automated system kicks in to take care of monotonous work.
• Groups: Just having a guestlist is not enough, dividing them in groups is important for management purposes. WedHaven uses groups to control what each guests see about the wedding and also notifications go out to groups accordingly. This is another core functionality needed to power our CVP of guest management.
• RSVP collection : KYG (Know your Guest) before the wedding - are they coming, who all are coming, how are they coming, do they need stay ? etc. RSVP functionality takes the guest lists and connects with the guests over WA to collect information from them automatically. This is another key feature to help reduce stress and manual tasks, going back to the CVP.
• Logistics : Collecting Id's for hotel rooms, assigning rooms, sharing pickup and drop off information. Same as RSVP, all this information is being collected from the guests automatically over WhatsApp. This helps save time for the hosts and is an efficient non intrusive way of collecting information from guests.
• Website & App for guests: You get a shareable link for either the app or website (whataver the hosts want to share with their guests), this is used for efficient presentation of information for the guests as well as becomes an entryway for them to interact with other functionalities in the app. The app/website is also one of the places where we collect rsvp and logistics information from the guest.
• Schedule & Itinerary sharing : Create events & Itinerary, add their details and share with the invited guests (invited guests depends on which group is invited to the event). All this information is surfaced via the app/website to the guests and automated notifications go out closer to the event. It helps keep the guest informed and reduce the volume of queries the hosts have to answer during the event.
• Photo Collection : Hosts can upload photos to share with the guests and at the same time can ask guests to upload any photos they may have taken during the event. They can also search for heir photos via facial recognition. The purpose of this feature is to keep the guests engaged on the platform and allow hosts to collect/collate photos more efficiently.
• FB like wall: A personalised social space for the wedding where the hosts and guests can post photos, videos and communicate about the wedding . Again the purpose is to keep the guests engaged on the platform as in the end the more guests are on the platform, the more informed they will always be and lead to happier guests and less confusion
• Automated and Manual updates via WA, email and SMS for guests, this is a critical add on to really drive the value of the CVP, the purpose is to keep the guests informed efficiently (with the least amount of effort) and have the system do the bulk of the work,
• Co-hosts : No one really manages a wedding alone irl, so there is no reason there should only be one host for online management, purpose is simply to help alleviate & distribute the load on the organisers.
• Social interactive features like - Couple story, live baraat tracking, Wishes & Thank you's etc.

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Keep in mind that it the core of the offering is our cvp : guest and logistics management and the social features are there to make the platform for attractive for the guests internally everything is powered via the guest management piece.

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Deeper dive

WedHaven is in PMF stage with early revenue.

It is Bootstrapped and not profitable.

There is an App (ios & android), website and WA (AI chatbot) experience available in market today.

Numbers

• Years of Operation : 2 years
• Pivots : 1 ( Started from focus on app only experience providing social interactive features only, then evolved the product to revolve around Guest management, with web and WA evolving as the prime way to interact with the guests)
• Weddings WedHaven was used in : 42
• Largest size of wedding served: 650
• Store rating : 4.2
• Ad spend : 10-12k montly.

Competitor Analysis

Let's look at the Wedding life cycle first to better understand the landscape.

Now , lets take a look at feature wise comparison between WedHaven, some Indian and some International players in the wedding tech domain.

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User & Market Research

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This section is about researching the Users and Market for WedHaven.

PS: Some of this data has been collected previously but most of it is based on the calls made recently.

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ICP

B2C

Customers we will connect with ourselves.

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B2B

These are other businesses part of the wedding industry who we can partner with to extend our reach.

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Result

Based on all the data above, we will chose 2 ICP's for now -

1. B2C ICP 3 : Siblings of Bride and Groom : Simple reason is they are doing a lot of running around and are the power users of our product, not to say that ICP1 and ICP 2 are not power users but 3 is the bigger group to reach right now.
2. B2B ICP 1 : Wedding planners : Size might be small but definitely a single point of dispersion/distribution for our product. Also they themselves are power users for our product. Other kind of Vendors are not relevant in the current state of our product.

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Blockers

B2C Blockers :

• Father / Elders : feel we can do without it entire family can help, why pay.
• Planners : unwilling to use the app if client brings it to them. Alright if they have a tieup with us previously.

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B2B Blockers -

• Clients : Willingness to use tech in their weddings
• Owners : Not willing to shell out the money

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Market Sizing

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We use a top down approach based on data that is publicly available and logical reasoning

Data & Math

Total wedding in 2023 - 1cr  

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Let's dig deep into the budgets of weddings in India. Data from CAIT reports.

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Total number of expected weddings - 1cr 

Avg Size of wedding in 2023 - 300 guests

Avg cost per guest we charge - 50 rs per guest

Avg ticket size per wedding - 15000rs

Total market size (P*Q) as per 50rs per guest - 15000 cr inr( i think its 1.8bn) 

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SAM Calculations

People who can afford our service is based on the overall budget of the wedding, as long as our prices are 1% or less of the overall budget we can push for it.  (so >15 lakh expenditure)

% of wedding in India having 1% or less budget pricing : 40.41% ( 38 + 2.41)

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SAM : 40.41% of tam (at 50 per guest) - 6061.5 cr inr (727m)

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The image!

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Experimentation & Channels

All Channels considered and their prioritisation framework.

Legend :

Green channel is Good to go Now

Yellow channel is if Budget permits.

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Details of chosen channels

Elaborating the why, how and expected outcomes for the channels we have chosen above.

Experiment 1: Wedding Exhibitions

Why?

Easiest way to have inperson interactions with a bunch of potential customers in a short duration of time.

The ICP we will be able to find here :

1. ICP3 : Siblings of bride and groom : We chose ICP 3 as the primary focus above and this is definitely a great place to talk to them face to face.
2. ICP1 : Bride : Even though they are not our focus ICP but they are still relevant and will act as influencers when final decisions are being made about our product.
3. B2B ICP 1 : Planners : Other planners have booth in such events as well, great way to upsell our product with the productivity benefits script.

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How?

Simple to execute, book a stall, setup stall, talk to potential customers.

Team required : 2-3 people

Booth related things required :

• • Create / print brochures,
  • Flex print for the stalls, preferably standing ones
  • QR code prints so people can try out right then and there.
  • Signup sheet for interested people

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Conversation/script :

• Hi/Hello, congratulations
• Product intro (45-60 sec), focus on:
• • Problems related to guest management
  • Problems that the family faces while managing and organising a big event such as this
  • Mention how WedHaven helps solve them and then mention other offerings
• Listen, expand on features where required
• Understand a bit more about them (use Questions we defined while creating ICP for our B2C customers in this doc above)
• Talk about pricing
• Demo right then and there
• collect contact info
• Follow up same day or next day morning

Expected outcome :

• Validating the Pitch : This will be a great way to refine our pitch, intention is to get feedback to see if customers - understood the product & were convinced on the usecase or found it hard to grasp.
• Validate the pricing : Given the category creator nature of this product, there is no baseline on pricing, so its being priced bottom up, we need to see in person how the pricing resonates with customers.
• Potential customers : Average footfall is 5k individuals, assuming avg 3 people per family. We get to talk to 1.6k potential weddings. Target will be to acquire 2% of them - 32 weddings.
• Feedback on what they need and where the product is lacking
• Get the brand name out there.

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Experiment 2: Friends & Family ++

Why?

Best channel at PMF stage, people connect and try on face value.

PS: ++ is for asking your employees to do the same... shameless promotion in their circles.

Using our network and expanded network, we will be able to find the following ICP's :

1. ICP 1 & 2 : Brides and Grooms : They may not be the focus ICP as per the prioritisation above but given we are going through our professional and personal network here they will be willing to give the product a try and give feedback here.
2. ICP 3: Siblings : This is more based on actual data, when we first started reaching out in our network, out of the first 10 people who ended up using hte app, 7 were siblings. ​

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How?

First we contact in mass using all these Sub Channels:

• Linkedin for professionals
• • Post for generic outreach
  • DM for closer colleagues
• Instagram and Fb for mass friend outreach
• • 1 story every 2 days
  • Atleast 2 post so people who arent very active also see it
• Whatsapp Family groups for family outreach
• • Post a few times here
• Whatsapp Direct message for close friends & family.
• • Pinging someone once is enough for this sub channel
• Discord for gaming friends ( its a real tight community)
• • General channel post if you feel there are people of relevant geography here
• Entrepreneur focused groups like TIE, headstart and WeWork Labs
• • Post a few times on this channel and see if people are interested in helping out.

Then we get in touch with people who show an interest and ideally arrange a "video" call to discuss the product further. We will reuse the script mentioned in Experiment 1 and refine it further

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Content :

Post content :

• Image/Video
• • Funny for personal groups : "WedHaven is fresh out of the Oven, looking for tech hungry to be weds"
  • Professional/decent for Linkedin : "WedHaven is fresh out of the Oven! Looking for early adopters"
• Text : Our product is fresh out of the oven, would love to have some people who have a wedding in the family or are about to get married try it out !

Expected Outcomes :

• Some early adopters: these are the people who will use the product just on our face/relationship value. Very very important for early feedback
• Pitch & Price validation : So this is a little tricky with people who are close as feedback is generally cushioned but we need to make sure we keep pushing for genuine critcal opinions here and use that to refine our pitch and pricing.
• Feedback (just need to emphasize on give harsh feedback no babying)
• Potential WoM promotion through people we talk to.

Experiment 3: On-ground visits (B2B)

Why?

We have chosen "Wedding planners" as our B2B ICP to focus on at the current stage & based on all the planners we have contacted their preferred way of discussion is In-Person.

To make things more comfortable for them, we plan on starting locally (Delhi) and meet with each and every planner in their office/shop. Purpose is to meet the ICP where they are comfortable at a time and place which they prefer.

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How?

We will do some groundwork here by -

1. Creating a list of planners (or buying) in Delhi
2. Segregating & grouping them by regions

Once that is done, pick a region for the day and start visiting.

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PS: This will need to be done in off season, during wedding seasons they wont entertain us.

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Material Required :

• Brochures with QR codes
• Phone & laptop to give them a demo

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Conversation /Script:

• Hi/ Hello, pleasantries
• Talk about our product while showing the app (Talk problems, show solutions)
• Listen, elaborate what they want to know more about
• Discuss their problems (similar to the questions we have in our B2B ICP section)
• Ask, if they would be interested in using the app, if not what would convince them to use it
• If interested, follow up with details over whatsapp, how to's, product explainer and all in the next 2 days.
• If not interested, ask them how they feel about partnering where they promote our product to their clients and we help them get more clients?
• End on a positive note, wishing good day

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Expected outcomes:

• Initial B2B clients : We know we will get booted out a lot, but the idea here is to get those few initial B2B clients so that we can get that feedback on how the product should be to cater to their needs.
• Feedback on why not : This will really help us refine the pitch, everytime we get booted atleast get a good understanding of who and why
• Exploratory result of partnerships with vendors.
• Price validation : We have different pricing plans for B2B compared to B2C, these meets will help refine it.​

Experiment 4: Future upsell

Why?

The way this works is a host (or organiser) of a wedding contacts us, pays for the product, adds an average of 300 guests, then the system prompts their guests to collect info, updates them on all things related to the wedding.

Since we are already communicating with the guests over whatsapp/emails/sms over 2-3 months and then even more so during the event. We have their attention and it won't be too bad to drop in a message Thanking them for being wonderful guests and about WedHaven asking for feedback and providing incentive if they wish to use our product.

It truly doesn't cost us anything and is definitely a route worth exploring

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How?

We currently send -

• Request for photos messages automatically few hours after the last event for the wedding
• Request for wishes on the morning (or next morning) of the last day.

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We will send another message 1 day after the last day, asking for feedback about their experience and promotion offering a 20% discount if they wish to use the app for a wedding in their family.

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Content:

Hi <name>, it was a pleasure to be able to serve you in #<hastag's> wedding. we hope you had a great experience, if there is anything you feel we missed or can do better please let us know! Also if you had a wonderful experience and want to use WedHaven App, use the code <hashtag>-20-xyz and we will give you a 20% discount!
Thanks WedHaven,
Making wedding Hassle free for you.

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Action buttons : Feedback (app store review page?) , Use discount code (link to our simple referral page).

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Expected outcomes:

• Some happy guests convert to users : This is a kind of controlled referral marketing, where the system itself does a promotion for the product to the guestlist of the host looking for potential future customers.
• Brand recall improvement : End of a note that ingrains the brand in their minds.
• Feedback : Potentially get feedback from guests on what worked and what not, which is a great way to evolve the product and the roadmap.

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Channels if budget permits

These are additional channels worth investing a little bit of time and money.

Maybe Experiment 1: SEO/Blogs

Why?

This is more an investment in the future, we understand a huge part of our customer base starts with google searches about specific vendors and problems for their wedding.

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How?

Look for trending topics on google, start building content around it, publish at regular intervals.

Overtime, add topics that our customer talks about and add topics related to our product (tech and weddings related)

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Apart from content whats required :

• server for publishing blogs
• attractive design / wedding themed
• various points to lead user to our product
• various places where we can collect user contact info for further conversions

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Expected outcomes:

• Trending topics by default are quick to get traction over google (given content is good)
• Slowly builds a top of the funnel channel for customers.
• Eventually with enough content, we start a bi-weekly newsletter.

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Maybe Experiment 2: AdOnMo & similar Screens

Why?

this is purely experiemental but as per the data we have, it seems like a great way to be in the minds of our Male's in our ICP and they are proven to have great recall value.

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How?

Create 2 -3 short videos (go for some simple animated ones) highlighting problems such as "managing guests in a pain", "collecting ids is hard", "last minute venue change" etc (look at the context we want to drive forward for the paid Ads channel above)

Must Have QR code, take user to MLP promoting our features and click throughs to download app.

This needs to be run 2 -3 months before the wedding season.

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Expected outcomes:

• New customers
• Higher recall value

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THE END - FIN!