Event ticketing and discovery site Ayojak.com rebrands as Explara.com; eyes global markets

Ayojak.com, an event ticketing and discovery site run by Pune-based Signature Technologies Pvt Ltd, has rebranded itself as Explara.com and is eyeing global markets—especially South Asia and other emerging countries—in a big way, Santosh Panda, founder and CEO of Ayojak (Explara) told Techcircle.in.

He said the company is shifting its focus from B2B events to all kind of events and is also planning to scale up the number of events considerably.

With rebranding, the product has been designed to ensure that the firm can have a lean team which will be able to scale from 300 events a month to 3,000 events a month, according to company's official blog post. The company is aiming to become an event discovery and solutions platform and is getting ready to serve markets across the globe, the blog post said. For effective event discovery, the firm will unveil a feature called 'recommendation engine' on the site by the middle of July this year. It has also reduced its prices and claims to be the cheapest event ticketing and registration platform in the Indian market.

In February this year, the startup received an undisclosed amount as funding from Harvard Business School (HBS) Alumni Angels, Srijan Capital and Blume Ventures. Google India MD Rajan Anandan and angel investor Kishore Warrier also participated in the round in their personal capacity. As per the agreement, HBS Alumni Angels' co-founder Ravi Gururaj joined Ayojak (Explara)'s board while Anandan joined the company as an advisor.

Started in 2009, Ayojak (now Explara) has in place a cloud-hosted event solutions platform and focusses on four service areas—event ticketing/registration, payment processing (online, retail and cash on delivery), event marketing and logistics. One can create an account on Ayojak for free and organise free events without paying anything. But a user has to pay when he/she organises a paid event/conference/meet-up.

Currently, the company has operations in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. It also claims to have served event organisers from India, the US, the UK, South Africa, Singapore and Philippines.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)