Zuddl Raises $13.35 Million in Series A From Alpha Wave Incubation, Qualcomm Ventures The fundraise will help Zuddl accelerate product development and scale globally
By S Shanthi
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Zuddl, a platform for virtual and hybrid events, today announced it has closed $13.35 Mn in Series A funding, led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), which is backed by DisruptAD, ADQ's venture platform, and managed by Falcon Edge Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures LLC. The round also saw participation from existing investors GrowX and Waveform Ventures. The fund raised will be used to accelerate product development and scale globally, with a particular focus on the US market.
Zuddl was founded by Bharath Varma and Vedha Sayyaparaju in May 2020. The current round of funding will be used for geographical expansion, deepen its tech team, and further build on its offering. Zuddl grew by over 30x since its inception and today has an enviable list of clients that include Fortune 100 and other fast-growing enterprises such as Kellogg's, Microsoft, Dicks Sporting Goods, BYJU'S, Grant Thornton, and NASSCOM amongst others, the startup said in a statement.
"Zuddl's growth can be attributed to enterprises' need for greater customizability and control for their virtual and hybrid events. Most of our customers are global companies with remote teams, who have complex use cases that we help solve easily, all the while being on-brand," said Bharath Varma, CEO and co-founder of Zuddl. "Attendee engagement is a critical pillar of any event - in-person or virtual. With Zuddl, we are leveraging our experience of running in-person events and using technology to solve engagement and event ROI. While the world slowly returns to normalcy, Zuddl helps enterprises abstract the complexity from virtual and hybrid events and focus on their core."
Zuddl solves for attendee engagement by using technology to power interest-driven networking and implement gamification based on user actions. "After being forced to go the virtual events route during the pandemic, enterprises are now discovering the advantages of hybrid events. Zuddl, through its hybrid-first model is tackling a unique set of problem for enterprise events - that of bringing customizability, control and engagement to virtual and hybrid events, without making it complicated for the event organizers. What works to Zuddl's advantage is the fact that they are from the events industry and understand the ground realities too well," said Anirudh Singh, managing director, Alpha Wave Incubation".
"Zuddl's platform for hybrid events helps enterprises easily customize and manage events with greater engagement," said Varsha Tagare, Sr. Director, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures. "We look forward to supporting their journey to enable new applications and immersive experiences for the events sector using XR, AI and 5G."
"We were excited by the vision, strong expertise and speed of execution of Zuddl's founding team. Bharath and Vedha make a well-balanced and exceptionally talented founding team. Their deep understanding of the needs of event organizers, speakers, sponsor and above all the attendees coupled with their product first thinking has made Zuddl offering standout in a highly crowded space", added Manu Rikhye, Partner, GrowX Venture.
