If you are not a diehard developer who makes it a rule to keep on coding rather than meeting people, you might have at least been to meetups or conferences held in your city. As event organizers require a platform to gather attendees, startups focusing on the events industry have also emerged and grown with the boom of startups.
One-stop platform for event management startup 31 Huiyi announced the acquisition of RMB 40 million ($US 5.83 million) series A+ round of financing on Wednesday, March 1st led by Sharelink Capital, joined by Chuanghehui Investment and Visino Investment. Previously, the company received angel investment from Shanghai-based venture capital iStart and series A round investment by SBCVC.
Established in 2010, 31Huiyi provides cloud-based event registration, promotion, ticketing, and payment. According to the data provided by 31Huiyi, it had more than 30 million registered accounts, including organizations in China and abroad, and has organized more than 100 million meetings and events as of 2016.
In recent years, in the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, and exhibitions) market emerged a number of Internet companies such as Huitangwang, Huixiaoer, Baichanghui, Jiudiangege, and Zhongzhi. As people widely share events through WeChat, Quxianchang and HiXianchang provide event management platform optimized for WeChat. Of course, Meetup is popularly used by English-using audience for a wide variety of social meetings.
Among the event management players, popular options are 31Huiyi and Huodongxing, both providing free event registration and aggregate participant’s information. In an event participant’s view, Huodongxing has a wider audience, providing more options for social events or parties, while 31Huiyi focuses on professional events for businesses.
As a frequent startup event organizer, TechNode uses both: 31Huiyi for large, paid events and Huodongxing for smaller, free events. When a user creates an event, 31Huiyi gives much more details on the event management. For example, on the backend, Huodongxing provides event details, participant management, and duplicate event option. On top of what its counterpart provides, 31Huiyi provides ticket installment, order management, and statistics.
Also, 31Huiyi provide much more options for optimizing WeChat. Users can create a QR code for voting and raffles, and even get the statistics on the backend. 31Huiyi developed a set of marketing automation in 2014, which give details of registered users and to provide users with marketing management. CEO Wan Tao said in an interview with 36kr that marketing revenue currently accounts for 15% to 20% of total revenue of 31Huiyi.