SINGAPORE, Oct. 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Venuerific (http://www.venuerific.com), SEA's largest event venue marketplace makes its first acquisition since beginning its journey in 2013. The company snapped up an online venue marketplace specialized in wedding called Wedever (www.wedever.co). Event venue marketplace has been a competitive industry in Singapore with many players striving to dominate the market since several years ago. However, as one of the earliest players, Venuerific continues to grow despite being a bootstrapped start-up with one round of small angel investment in 2014.
"We have steadily built a strong foothold in the events industry by being able to provide the accessibility to unique venue spaces for corporate and social events. With the acquisition of Wedever, my team and I are looking forth to venturing into this promising wedding industry and making it a more hassle-free journey for couples to host their special day as well as enlarging the boundaries of wedding venues," says Ricardo Sentosa, the Co-founder and CEO of Venuerific.
Venuerific
According to the Department of Statistics, the top three things for spaces like restaurants in Singapore spend the most on are rental, remuneration, and purchase of goods and materials. Maintaining and fully maximizing the spaces even when they are not operational can be difficult. In the first 7 months of 2017 alone, there were 400 new restaurants and 450 restaurants that closed down. In light of this, Venuerific has helped spaces like this and more totaling up to more than 800 spaces such as cafes, bars, restaurants, lofts, hotels and more in Southeast Asia to discover their full potential and open themselves up for events.
It has also had some significant milestones leading up the acquisition. Out of the 900 startups that had applied, Venuerific was selected as one of the 40 startups to pitch at Slingshot @ Switch. Afterwards, it received the most favorite votes and was awarded the Audience Choice Award and subsequently selected to be featured on Season 5 of Channel News Asia's TV series, Start-Up to compete in rounds of challenges and was one of the few finalists. Most recently, Venuerific was the recipient of the Best Event Venue Marketing Platform Award at the CMO Asia Awards.
Access to the SGD $250 million wedding market in Singapore
The average cost of a wedding has been increasing at an average of 6.5% since 2017. The trend is more people in Singapore are getting married later in life, hence the couples budgeting in higher amount for the momentous occasion. According to Department of Statistics, the cost of a weekday lunch banquet has increased from S$1,065 to S$1,135, slightly higher than the amount of weekday dinner banquet in 2017.
It's exciting to see how Venuerific will capture this untapped market through its acquisition of Wedever, which is the brainchild of Nicholas Koh, a NUS business graduate who started it out of his passion for coding.
"Wedever targets a niche in allowing couples to quickly find venues within budget, without having to email or call each of them. It provides price per pax estimates that are semi-crowdsourced, even for alternative spaces such as cafes and restaurants. I'd heard of Venuerific a few years ago, and had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo and Cynthia. Their story is impressive and they have persisted in a tough space and are now a recognizable brand in venue marketing. Venuerific was a top choice when I was looking for a team who could shepherd Wedever. I have no doubt they'd be able to take it further than I was able to in promising industry," says Nicholas Koh.
The deal was made through cash and is undisclosed at this point of time. Post-acquisition, Wedever will function as a separate entity under Venuerific and will be expanding to other regions in SEA in 2019.
Venuerific is making its way towards becoming the most influential player in the industry and it certainly is on a positive lookout.
Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181008/2260807-1-a
Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181008/2260807-1-b
