This Startup Allows Foreign Travelers To Official Crash A Wedding A platform for to-be-married couples to open up their weddings to foreign travelers.

Indian weddings are all about colors, the grand celebration, rituals, ceremonies etc. But the best part about these is that as you cross one state to another you will experience totally different styles of wedding. And this is one thing about which, people who are staying outside India, are crazy. They love to explore and visit Indian weddings as for them Indian wedding are never forgetting an experience.

Have you ever thought that why don't we tap this market? I mean people love to visit Indian wedding and we Indian can make money out this. You know, if you look at the figures, Indian wedding industry is $38 billion market, growing 25-30 percent YoY. Moreover, Indians spend 1/5th of their lifetime wealth on a son or daughter's wedding.

With more than 50 per cent of country's population under 25, approximately 10 million weddings take place in India every year, this wedding industry is providing an opportunity to budding entrepreneurs to tap it.

Krishnapal Singh, a budding entrepreneur is churning out an opportunity for himself by proving cultural experiences to foreign travelers. He founded a startup, ExperienceThewedding.com, a platform for to-be-married couples to open up their weddings to foreign travelers who seek cultural experiences on holidays.

After completing his MBA, he moved back to Rajasthan. He wanted do something of its own in a state where wedding and tourism are the only occupations. He blended both of these occupations and created something unique which nobody is doing.

After lots of research and consulting his relatives, he built the whole concept of allowing foreign travelers to attend Indian wedding by putting tickets to it.

Entrepreneur India interacted with Singh to know more about his journey and how the response of the customers is.

Saga behind the title

I wanted to keep the name simple so that it clearly tell our customers what we offer and who we are so. Therefore, I simply put the name Experiencethewedding which clearly send a message that we help our customers in experiencing the weddings.

Business Mockup

We help travelers in getting a unique experience of attending an Indian wedding where he gets to know the culture, traditions, rituals of India through different cultural weddings as well as authentic local food, chance to connect with locals.

So a traveler or anyone who wants to experience the wedding come to our portal search the wedding type he wants to experience according to his time and budget and buy the wedding ticket of that marriage. We keep our commission from the ticket amount and give the rest amount to the couple whose wedding is going to be attended by that traveler.

What is the cost of one ticket?

The cost depends on the budget of the wedding and the facilities that couple is providing to the guests. For example, if a couple is making the arrangement of the guest's accommodation in a three-star hotel then the price will be according to that. So couple consults us and together we decide the price of the ticket. Our first couple on board Sahil and Supriya has fixed a ticket of their wedding at Rs. 15000 in which guest will get access to all the events, food, accommodation etc.

How is the response of the customers?

The response is very good. We are getting lot of queries from travelers as well as couples. We have just started marketing our services so it will take time to generate revenues and to spread the word.

Mentor in your Entrepreneurial journey

Well, my father is my biggest mentor. He has taught me to believe in myself. He always says that any idea can be successful if pursued religiously and this is the reason why I started my venture into this space.

Business fundamentals that you believe in:

Well, I personally believe that customer is the king. In any business, we should never avoid customer's voice. His praise, his complaints, his dissatisfaction his suggestions etc and we should always incorporate customers feedback in our business.

Another thing which I believe is that if targeted marketing is done instead of traditional marketing, the results would be much better because the target marketing gives us maximum output in minimum input.

Any hurdles you faced while starting up?

Since the idea is very new it is taking time to make people understand the whole thing. People are coming up with the questions like, is this feasible, what if a traveler is a thief or what if he misbehaves with the other guests? So we are trying to educate people about our filters that we keep in background check of the buyer.

Another challenge for us is that there are couples who are not motivated just on money part but their weddings are such that we want to have them on board. Therefore, convincing them to come on our board is one of the major challenges so that our buyers can experience different types of weddings.

And lastly the budget which is core hurdle for us. So we are trying for the sources where we can market with minimal budget and can expect maximum output.

Any plans to scale up

Right now we are operating in India but in future we will take our business to many other countries. For the same, we need to expand our marketing and we are on track for these plans.

Changes you have experienced in your own self.

I would say that I started breathing my work. I wake up with my daily itinerary and sleep with the brainstorming session and I do not realize that I am working anymore. If you are doing something of your interest your work becomes your fun.