Fullonwedding: started with the vision to bridge the gap between vendors and couples who are getting married.

Fullonwedding is a Bangalore based startup founded by Shalabh Jhalawad, Khushbu Jagwani & Himanshu Jagwani in 2016.

“It leverages Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing to develop personalised and contextual solutions for the customers, says Shalabh”.

We got an opportunity to talk with Shalabh, the co-founders of Fullonwedding. Let’s look at his journey of being an entrepreneur. And I am sure it will inspire you as well.

Give a brief info about your startup?

Fullonwedding, which is part of Fowks Infomedia Pvt. Ltd is an online platform that aims to bridge the gap between the wedding vendors and the couples getting married. Founded in 2016 by Shalabh Jhalawad, Khushbu Jagwani & Himanshu Jagwani, a team of IIFT & IIT alumni, Fullonwedding partners with wedding venues and service providers to promote their brand presence and assists in growing their sales and customer reach using digital media. It leverages Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing to develop personalised and contextual solutions for the customers. Fullonwedding is bringing marketing automation to a large, under-served wedding business market that needs sophistication in their marketing efforts.

What made you start your start-up and what problem does it solve?

While having a wedding in family, we realised that even after so much technological advancement in all other sectors, the complete Indian wedding industry is still unorganised. There is no dearth of supply or demand but still there is not a single seamless platform to connect wedding couples and vendors nor there is standardisation of any wedding services.

 

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

An MBA from IIFT Delhi, Khushbu is the CEO and leads product and strategy at FullOnWedding. At 31, she has an extensive experience in business strategy, growth hacking and product management across banking and eCommerce domains. She believes that a great team and right execution is the key to success of any business. Khushbu has always been a dreamer and believes that life is too short to think small.

Shalabh, COO at Fullonwedding, is a serial entrepreneur and leads sales and marketing at Fullonwedding. Immediately after finishing his Mechanical Engineering from Indore, he got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and ventured into own business. He has successfully grown his group of family businesses to new heights before starting Fullonwedding and lives and breathes entrepreneurship

 Himanshu, CTO at Fullonwedding is a Computer Engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur & did his MS from Columbia University. He heads the technology team at Fullonwedding that is working to leverage Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing to develop personalised and contextual solutions for the customers. He loves building new applications that can change the way we live our daily lives.

 All 3 of us had successful careers in our respective streams but there was always a desire to build something that is much bigger than us, something that can change the world around us. When we decided to take the plunge, we did talk to various industry stakeholders for market validation and ensure that we are taking the right steps. Luckily for us, all our potential users and vendors were extremely enthusiastic about our product from the very beginning and it encouraged us to move forward. The final plunge to leave our full-time jobs and get into this was definitely emotionally tough due to the risks involved. But the fact that we already had a rock solid founding team with diverse skills in place and we all were so passionate about this idea, we thought it is the best time for us to go for it.

 

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

After its rapidly growing popularity in Bangalore, Mumbai and Indore, Fullonwedding has now entered Delhi market in order to cater to the growing customer demand from North India. The team is also now gearing up to offer destination weddings in the royal land of Udaipur and exotic beach locations of Goa that are the all-time favourite wedding locations of its growing NRI clientele. It is now targeting to scale up its operations to 15 cities and grow its revenues by 5X in next 18 months.

 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

We at Fullonwedding have always focused on giving the customer a rich and seamless experience. Creating this experience for our customers is what keeps us awake at night.

 

Who are your competitions and how are you better than them?

Online wedding planning is still in the nascent stage in India. Startups like Wedmegood, Weddingz & Shaadisaga who are targetting wedding planning market but they are primarily a directory platform that lists all vendors.

Fullonwedding partners with a curated set of wedding vendors and acts as an extended sales & marketing platform for them. It works on subscription model with its partner vendors and is bringing marketing automation to a large, under-served wedding business market that needs sophistication in their marketing efforts. Fullonwedding also has a very high conversion rate owing to the way it leverages Artificial Intelligence and image processing to develop personalised and contextual solutions for the customers. This has made Fullonwedding a preferred partner for the wedding vendors giving it a huge price advantage over available market prices and in turn enabled it to offer guaranteed lowest price and high quality to the couples.

 

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manage it?

Starting up a venture can be really stressful but the gratification from having so many happy customers keeps us motivated. Plus we really enjoy what we are doing right now at Fullonwedding. I try to keep myself physically fit and I find a way to unwind by playing cricket and hitting the gym.

 

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

Fullonwedding, a Bangalore based wedding tech startup has raised an undisclosed sum from a group of marquee investors in a pre‐series A round. It plans to use this funding to expand geographically, grow the business verticals and strengthen its partner network.

 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

Our positioning has been correct and we are very transparent with our customers and vendors, hence we don’t see any misconception about us.

What gets you excited about this company?

Wedding planning industry is currently on a boom and this sector need to get organised with the help of technology. We operate in the Rs. 260,000-crore Indian wedding segment, which is growing 25-30% year-on-year. This opportunity is very exciting and keeps us going.

 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

I start my day early with gym. We hit our office at 9:30 and normally leave by 8:30 PM. I am a cricket enthusiast and we play every day for an hour in night. Before hitting the bed, I do make a point to read some book.

 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other

The story of the three founders coming together is as fun and beautiful as weddings are – while Shalabh and Khushbu are high school friends & got married recently, Himanshu is Khushbu’s brother. For the trio that goes way back, when the gap presented itself, they were obvious choices for each other as partners.

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