hat do you think the next major adaptation in the global event tech industry may be ? There are three aspects to events now and how virtual events are evolving . There is content , which the organisers bring in through speakers , and so on . Second is community , where all the people come in from different regions and attend a particular event with a common purpose . Third is engagement . So , content plus community plus engagement .

Organisers spend a lot of money in bringing in people and then they forget about them . How you can keep them engaged post event , and then before the event as well , is going to be crucial in the events industry of the future .

Although now based in California , Hubilo was started in India . What would you say are the current key strengths of that country ’ s events industry ? First , it is quite cost efficient and where you ’ re able to run a lot of things at a lower cost . Second , you can work with multiple agencies over here instead of having the in-house team . Third , the entire industry is well connected .

There are not many large-scale events that happen in specific categories . There are a lot of partnerships that usually happen at events , so at every event we see that there are a lot of sponsors and partners .

What ’ s your vision for Hubilo ’ s future development , and where ’ s the company at in terms of investment and capital ? Our vision is not to just be an event

management software company . Our vision at the end of the day is to create a value that can generate a lot of business opportunities for our clients . When I say that it could be either pipeline , it could be the member renewal rate , it could be engagement to your internal employees , but how do we create that value is the power we would want to give to our organisers .

In terms of funding , we ’ ve raised our Series A round which was US $ 23.5m from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital . Two months before that we raised $ 4.5m in a seed round from Lightspeed India .

What do you expect the industry to look like in 10 years ’ time ? One thing that I know is that whenever a new technology will come in , event managers are going to be the first ones

Above : All about engagement : the new Hubilo platform

Below : Vaibhav Jain , CEO , Hubilo

to use it . We will be seeing a lot of augmented reality , virtual reality , a lot of product launches and tech showcases in the next 10 years . What I ’ m seeing is a blurring of the lines of the physical and virtual , where people at home would be able to experience how the physical audiences will experience the event as if they are actually present . A lot of technology needs to evolve to make us reach to that level .

Do you see large technology companies , such as LinkedIn and Cisco , moving into the traditional event organiser space and , if so , should traditional organisers be afraid of that competition ? I don ’ t think that they ’ ll move into the organiser space because they ’ re going to be looking at tech platforms . At the end of the day , all event organisers try to collaborate with people who provide platforms . Now there ’ s a different scenario where players like YouTube , Vimeo , Cisco would want to move into the virtual event space because that is an entire tech play . As it ’ s video , they would want to be a part of it , as the entire world is working from home .

The office video becomes a very important part of collaboration . One of the collaboration forms is organising virtual events also for your internal employees or your external prospects or audiences .