We are extremely proud to announce that Samaaro has raised $125,000 in angel investment round earlier this week from a group of leading investors, which included Richa Kar, Founder of Zivame, Kedar Gavane, Senior Vice President & Head (APAC) of Comscore and Naman Gupta, Assistant Vice President of Swiggy, amongst others.
As we embark on this new journey, we couldn’t have hoped for a better set of experts to join our team and help us reach new heights. Having received the vote of confidence from such highly accomplished dignitaries signals to us that we are well-positioned for the future.
We, at Samaaro, strongly believes in solving problems through innovative tech solutions. When the pandemic left the events industry in shambles last year, we felt it was our responsibility as entrepreneurs to create a digital solution that would not only help organizations survive the pandemic, but also thrive during it.
A year later, our vision has stood the test of time, in that, we have managed to build a product that replicates the experience of a live event as impeccably as possible, but in a safe and sustainable way. This has enabled organizers to engage and connect with the end-user effectively and form meaningful connections.
We have so far partnered with organizations of all sizes to help them host varied Virtual Events such as Virtual Expos, Fairs, Trade shows, Summits and Conferences, and we hope to continue to do so at a larger scale in the times ahead, now that we have the prestige of being funded in the angel investment.
Speaking about the angel investment, here is what Purnank Prakash, the CEO and Co-founder of Samaaro had to say:
“Our priority in this round was to onboard investors with a strong background and varied expertise along with funds raising. I am elated that we were able to successfully achieve that. The funds so coming through angel investment will be utilized towards polishing and scaling our product along with building a Rockstar Team while streamlining operations. We’ll also be expanding our market reach and establish a footprint in European, Middle-eastern and North American markets, where we have received a lot of traction for our product.”
“There is a great requirement for a virtual event platform that focuses on the needs of the large events sector i.e. Large Conferences, Fairs, Exhibitions & Tradeshows. Here, Businesses & Organizers mostly generate revenue through sponsorships, cross-selling, product showcasing and lead generation. This is where Samaaro creates a niche for itself. Instead of focusing on generating revenue through attendees, we empower businesses to drive their growth through Virtual Events on Samaaro, by generating leads through deep analytics and highly engaging platform features. ”
“Our great retention rate is a testament to the fact that we sit right into the marketing stack of the brands that are using us to drive their growth. We have helped more than 2000 brands globally reach out to their customers and grow their businesses in these tough times. We are on a mission to change how events enable marketing. For the Post-Covid world, we have launched a Hybrid Event Platform which will connect In-Person and Virtual Attendees, defying all geographical barriers for any event hosted on Samaaro.”
Meet the Angels
Chaitanya Kalipatnapu
Chaitanya Kalipatnapu is a Lecturer and Product Manager at INSEAD, France – the world’s leading and largest graduate business school. Chaitanya is also the Co-Founder & Executive Director of Eruditus Executive Education, France. Eruditus has partnered with more than 30 countries to date, including MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, UC Berkeley and many more launching more than 100 courses and serving students from more than 80 countries.
Richa Kar
Richa is the founder of an online lingerie brand Zivame which she launched back in 2011, when even talking about lingerie was considered taboo in India. Yet, through grit and determination, she led the brand to global success and today, Zivame is worth more than Rs. 681 Cr.
Garvita Bajpai
Garvita is the Head of Product Strategy & Operations – Payments at Google. She has also led growth strategy and experience at Flipkart, where she drove an increment of 120 Million USD through strategic initiatives like pricing, content and value-added services. She has 8+ years of experience in E-commerce and Strategy in Internet & Technology domain, with global market experience across the US and India.
Naman Gupta
Naman carries diverse work experience across industries like e-Commerce, Investment Banking and Technology. He is currently the Assistant Vice President, Supply Strategy & Swiggy Access. He has worked in the past as the Head of Strategy & Special Projects in Grabfood Singapore and helped build GrabFood in Southeast Asia.
Naman has also been the Business Head in Zivame & Associate Director of Snapdeal, leading the entire spectrum of Investors Relations and Fundraising at Snapdeal.
Kedar Gavane
Kedar is the Senior Vice President and Head – APAC of Comscore – A global media measurement and analytics company. He has also been the Vice President of Comscore for India & Australia. Before that Kedar was Head of Corporate Strategy & COO at Reliance, where he also managed business development.
Aniket Pandey
Aniket is currently the Vice President of Growth Initiatives at HighRadius. He has been leading the company for the past 8 years in many capacities like Associate Director, Director, and Assistant Vice President.
Abhimanyu Shekhawat
Abhimanyu is currently the senior director of Flipkart Commerce Cloud, where he handles Adtech, Pricing, Fraud Management and CRM. He has also been the Business Head of Flipkart Plus & Super coins, a consumer loyalty & benefit programs, where he handled full-cycle management of service, product, and marketing functions. Apart from that Abhimanyu has also led the Business and Digital Marketing of Flipkart.
Shivanandan Pare
Shivanandan is a Harvard alumni and CEO of Adda52.com the largest online poker platform in India. He has been actively mentoring startups in the field of AI & Internet Technology. In the past, he was the Head of New Digital Businesses and E-Commerce at Aditya Birla Fashion. He has also worked as COO and AVP – Strategy at Reliance.
Nishad Kenkre
Nishad heads the CEO’s office in a co-pilot to CEO capacity with a focus on organizational strategy, business planning, product planning, engineering roadmap delivery, people management and governance systems across all business lines.
In his previous stint at The Walt Disney Company, he was a member of the India Leadership Team, leading the strategy function. Fun fact: Nishad was also the Project Head for Disney Musical – Beauty and The Beast.
Mahesh Nallapati
Mahesh is currently the Director at Swiggy. Earlier, he was the Engagement Manager at Accenture Strategy and has over 6 years of experience in leading delivery of consulting assignments across Consumer goods, Professional services and Automotive segments.
Anurag Choudhary
Anurag has been AVP, Business head of Swiggy, responsible for the revenue of 100 Million USD. He has worked on Product, Design, Merchandise, Supply and Consumer Insights of the product launched at Swiggy like Healthhub and Swiggy premium. He has also been the National Head of Business Development & Account Management at Swiggy. At Snapdeal Anurag has been the Director & Head Marketplace and also the Associate Director of Account Management.
Shreya Ghorawat
Shreya is currently handling Strategy and Program Delivery, South & Southeast Asia at Philip Morris International, and was previously Business Development Manager at the same organization. Before that, she has also worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
Kiran Bikash Rana
Kiran is Leading global teams in the B2B SaaS Space with over 14 years of overall experience in Consultative Sales, Growth Marketing, Solution Engineering/Pre-Sales.
Within a year since inception, Samaaro has become a multi-award winning virtual event platform loved by global brands to host immersive online events. With investments such as angel investment coming in at the perfect time, our efforts so far have been validated ensuring the road ahead looks brighter than ever. We wish to thank all our customers for placing their faith in us and hosting events on our platform. The journey has just begun for Samaaro, and we cant be more excited for the future!
About Samaaro
Samaaro an award-winning virtual event platform funded in the angel investment and recognized as one of the 30 best and most innovative startups in India. It provides a powerful online event software designed to help organizations host scalable, secure, and effective virtual events for a global audience. Samaaro’s unique features & versatility allow it to host a variety of Virtual Events such as Virtual conferences, Virtual Summits, Virtual Fairs, Virtual Exhibitions & more.
