A virtual events platform will use a £17 million Series A funding round to launch bases in London and across Europe.
A year ago, Silicon Valley company Hubilo witnessed its revenue as a successful in-person events company begin to collapse as COVID-19 took hold.
Giving itself just 26 days to build an entirely new platform from the ground up to answer the customer demand driven by the pandemic, it has emerged as one of the leading platforms for experiential virtual events.
Hubilo has grown its month-over-month revenue consistently by 50% ever since enrolling its first paid customer in April 2020, achieving 10,000% growth overall.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital, alongside several industry experts and luminaries, including John Thompson, chairman of the board at Microsoft, and Chris Schagen, former CMO at Contentful.
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This funding comes just months after Hubilo’s £3.2m seed round in November 2020.
The firm plans to expand its sales teams across Europe, acquire office space in London, hire on-ground teams in the UK and US and invest further in the product and design teams based in India.
It says it will also roll out several features that will enable stronger attendee engagement and new monetisation opportunities for organisers.
Hubilo has already hosted more than a million attendees on its platform. It says organisers see increased attendee engagement through built-in networking features including meeting tables, private rooms, meeting schedules and gamification features such as leaderboards.
There is one-click integration with platforms including HubSpot, SalesForce and Marketo, enabling them to demonstrate ROI through event data integrated with their existing workflows.
“We’ve experienced remarkable growth over the last few months thanks to our vision of placing experience and intelligence at the forefront of virtual events,” said founder and CEO Vaibhav Jain.
“Our strategy, product features and platform intelligence are expanding the possibilities of what is achievable in the events space, and we’re continually delivering greater value for event organisers, sponsors and other stakeholders.
“We’re excited to welcome our investors onboard as we begin this next phase of global expansion.”
Suranga Chandratillake, general partner at Balderton Capital, added: “The financial cost and productivity, as well as the climate hit of traditional, in-person events, can be huge.
“Until the COVID-19 lockdowns, however, our collective inertia meant that nothing had changed. The pandemic has demonstrated that virtual and hybrid events can be as engaging as physical ones and substantially cheaper to run and attend, more profitable for organisers and contributors, and more inclusive for attendees.
“Hubilo is at the heart of this revolution of how people meet and ideas get exchanged, and we are excited to be partnering with them for their journey.”
Events