Transforming the way events are conceptualized and booked through a unique tech platform, Hafla is the world’s first AI-based event ideation, recommendation, and aggregated sourcing platform for venues, equipment, services, and catering. By delivering personalized solutions through its interactive one-stop-shop for events – corporate and personal, large and small—Hafla minimizes the stress in event planning so that everyone can celebrate more. Founded by people with years of experience in the event industry, and backed by data from more than 25,000 events, Hafla provides a much-needed tech-enabled one-stop-shop for all event services. Here’s an excerpt from Magzoid’s conversation with the CEO, Vaibhav Doshi.
What is Hafla and how has your journey been, till the point where you wanted to start it?
Hafla is a one-stop shop for event organizers to book everything needed for organizing events, and a business management platform for event industry suppliers to list services and generate business. We started Hafla because we believe there is no simple and trusted way to find and book the 4 essential elements of an event, which include venues, equipment, and catering.
Hafla’s purpose is to simplify event planning so that everyone can celebrate more. In 9 months, we have engaged in conversations with about 8000 event planners and delivered 2500 events. The journey has been very exciting with hundreds of customers sharing very positive feedback and placing repeat orders.
How does Hafla differentiate itself from the generic event suppliers?
Hafla has three key differences compared to a generic event planner.
Scale: We deal with more than 500 new event requests every week and deliver hundreds of events each month. We have built a strategic process and the right team to manage high volumes (50+ team members to date).
A typical event planner can not handle such a scale.
Tailored service: With Hafla, you can order things fully online for simple requirements (e.g., renting a bouncy castle, or booking a magic show) or work with event specialists to customize your event. With a typical event supplier, you engage only in complex custom events.
We provide technology to both customers and event industry suppliers, including event planners. For example, we are building AI recommendation engines to provide event design and solutions to find the best solution matching the needs of customers.
In simple terms, Hafla is like Expedia, and an event supplier is like an airline.
How do you fit in well with luxurious and bespoke events?
Luxurious and bespoke events need three main aspects for guests to have a memorable experience those aspects are: creativity, novelty, and quality.
Team Hafla works with more than 750 event suppliers and has an internal algorithm to identify which partners can provide the required creativity and quality. Furthermore, we bring novelty products, entertainment, and F&B ideas that the organizers themselves may not be able to imagine and/or source.
Which industry segments do you see Hafla growing towards?
We are witnessing high growth across social as well as corporate events. Birthday parties are the most frequently done event type but Hafla has also served more than 500 corporates for their events.
Anything that you would like to add?
We are focusing on building the product (technical) and processes to quickly reach 1000+ events per day while maintaining a top-notch experience. By the end of 2022, we will enable 10,000+ events and set the stage for 50,000 events next year. We are also working on launching Hafla services in Saudi Arabia later in the year.