Event Tech Startup Airmeet Raises $35 Mn From Prosus, Sistema Asia Fund; Plans Global Expansion

Bengaluru-based event-led engagement startup Airmeet has raised $35 Mn in Series B round from new investors Prosus Ventures, Sistema Asia Fund, RingCentral Ventures, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, DG Daiwa Ventures and Nexxus Global. The round also saw participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Accel India.

The startup plans to use the funds to expand its footprints in the global marketplace while banking on investing in R&D and scaling its GTM function.

The current round follows Airmeet’s Series A round of $12 Mn in September 2020 and $3 Mn in a seed round in March 2020 from Sequoia, Accel India, Venture Highway and Global Founders Capital among others.

Founded in 2019 by Lalit Mangal, Vinay Kumar Jasti, and Manoj Kumar Singh, Airmeet is an online meeting and event hosting platform. On Airmeet, instead of simply broadcasting the event, participants can connect with other event attendees for one-to-one and one-to-many online interactions.

It offers two products — ‘Conference’ and ‘Social Webinar’, where it offers virtual tables, networking lounges, backstage, stage, claps and audience reactions to participants in order to recreate the live atmosphere online.

With the ability to scale up to 100,000 participants, support multi-format events such as webinars, hybrid conferences, trade shows and workshops, Airmeet is building an all-year-round engagement suite that will extend into virtual reality and metaverse to deliver a highly immersive experience.

In 2021, Airmeet claims to have scaled its recurring revenue by 24X, growing at 30% month-on-month. It further claims to have enabled 120K+ event organisers to stream 150 Mn minutes of video airtime globally.

Over 5,500+ brands such as Flipkart, University College London, Rotman School of Management, Zircom (Shell Oil), Viacom CBS, Mankato, among others use Airmeet’s platform to host events across the globe.

When the world went increasingly digital due to the Covid-19 induced lockdown, events, gatherings and get-togethers went virtual as well. Despite the world coming back to a make-shift normal, the events industry has adopted the virtual model.

The global market size of virtual events is poised to touch $400 Bn by 2027, and startups such as Hubilo, Hopin, Swapcard, TouchCast and Bizzabo, pushing the boundaries for greater growth amid the new normal.