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Of late, reports of venture capitalists tightening their purse strings and a number of start-ups failing have hit the press. The writing on the wall is that responsible spending with consistent delivery on experience and a sound revenue model help in the long run.
The College Fever, an event aggregator and ticketing platform, specialises in the segment of college festivals and events, even as event aggregation companies face ups and downs. Co-founded by Kushal Aralihalli, Abhilash Ramachandran and Subramaniam Srinivasan, The College Fever bootstrapped for two years before attracting $250,000 from a Mumbai-based VC firm early this year. The College Fever’s co-founder and CEO Aralihalli says it took about eight months of user research before the platform went live. He reveals the company’s target audience is 30 million college students in about 37,000 colleges across 900 universities in India.
“There are players looking at events in general and commercial events. But we wanted to build the largest student interest community,” Aralihalli says.
Revenue stream The College Fever has more than one revenue stream. It earns a 3 per cent commission on tickets sold on its platform. It also offers ‘offbeat’ workshops. Trainers in design thinking, film making, travel photography, portrait drawing and block printing conduct these workshops for students and earn a second income while The College Fever earns a 20 per cent commission on entry fees.
Scouting events, taking online courses and making money part-time that was invested into The College Fever was part of firming up the business. The founders made the crucial choice early to outsource the development work. Then, the idea needed testing.
“We had to prove market size and traction in terms of revenues or visits. We had to ensure, say, a 40 per cent improvement on those factors from month to month,” says Aralihalli. Building the team came next, and finally, targeting investments.
The College Fever says it has sold more than 40,000 tickets, even catering to Tier-2 locations such as Mysuru, Coimbatore, Jabalpur, Guwahati and Hubbali. In its third year now, it aims to strengthen its reach in the North-East while tapping hot markets such as New Delhi and Mumbai.
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