At the beginning of the year, Hubilo, a company specializing in event analytics, transitioned its focus to become a platform for virtual events in response to the challenges presented by COVID-19. The startup has now announced the completion of a $4.5 million seed funding round, spearheaded by Lightspeed, and anticipates surpassing $10 million in bookings and accommodating over one million attendees in the coming months.

This funding round also saw participation from several angel investors, including Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshworks; Nishant Rao, former CEO of LinkedIn India; Jonathan Boutelle, co-founder of Slideshare; and Abinash Tripathy, CEO of Helpshift.

Hubilo’s customer base includes prominent organizations such as the United Nations, Roche, Fortune, GITEX, IPI Singapore, Tech In Asia, Infocomm Asia and Clarion Events. While the company is based in San Francisco, approximately 12% of its current sales originate from Southeast Asia, and the company intends to expand its presence in this region. Further expansion efforts will also target the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Vaibhav Jain, founder and CEO of Hubilo, explained to TechCrunch that prior to the pandemic, the company’s clientele largely consisted of enterprises and governmental bodies utilizing its platform for the organization of large-scale events. These were also the first entities to cease hosting events in person.

In February, the company recognized that a vast majority of physical events globally were being postponed or cancelled. To mitigate the decline in demand for in-person events, Hubilo offered to extend existing contracts by six months without charge, according to Jain. However, this measure proved insufficient to retain clients, with most either terminating their contracts or suspending them indefinitely.

Consequently, Hubilo’s revenue fell to zero in February. Faced with a team of approximately 30 employees and financial reserves sufficient for only three months, Jain stated the company was forced to consider either ceasing operations or adopting a new business model. The Hubilo team rapidly developed a minimum viable product (MVP) virtual event platform within a month and secured a client to test it without cost. This initial virtual event took place in March, and Jain noted that the company has experienced continuous growth since then.

This shift positions Hubilo within the competitive landscape of virtual event platforms, alongside companies like Cvent and Hopin (the platform used for TechCrunch Disrupt). Jain asserts that his company distinguishes itself by offering organizers greater opportunities for branding their virtual environments; emphasizing sponsorship options that incorporate contests, event feeds, and virtual lounges to enhance attendee involvement; and delivering data analytics capabilities with integrations for Salesforce, Marketo, and HubSpot.

With the widespread move to virtual events, terms like “Zoom fatigue” and “webinar fatigue” have emerged, highlighting the challenge event organizers face in not only attracting attendees but also maintaining their engagement throughout an event.

Hubilo aims to enhance the virtual event experience through “gamification,” utilizing features such as its Leaderboard. This allows organizers to award points for activities like viewing sessions, visiting virtual booths, or communicating with others, and subsequently offer prizes to the highest-scoring attendees. Jain indicated that the Leaderboard is the platform’s most frequently used feature.