#CoRise Seed Prize winner - MyWedStory
At the launch of Gujarat Government's Startup Policy program, we announced our small radical initiative - #CoRise Seed Prize - to help entrepreneurs with finance part. We are starting the #CoRise Ventures initiative consisting of 100 Entrepreneurs who will be contributing Rs. 1K each on every month to support fellow entrepreneurs. Every month we will announce the "#CoRise Startup of the Month" which will receive the Seed Prize of Rs. 1 lac from #CoRise Ventures.
All the 100 Entrepreneurs will be giving votes to 10 selected startups for "#CoRise Startup of the Month" and the startup which gets the maximum votes will be announced as the winner. We will be selecting the startups from our existing network and with referrals from fellow #CoRisers.
We are also going to support the selected startups with "#CoRise Startup Kit" which will be consisting of services/support initiatives about how these 100 entrepreneurs can significantly support these 10 startups i.e. Domain Hosting provider can give significant discount on their services, an eCommerce consultant can spend few hours with relative startups to help them better implement things, a digital media company can provide advertisement worth rs. 10K on their website to selected startups. The "#CoRsie Startup Kit" will be worth almost Rs. 10 Lacs!
We have the amazing group of 100 entrepreneurs from very diverse backgrounds and it would be interesting to see how valuable this "#CoRise Startup Kit" turns out. Also the kind of peer learning that will happen among these 100 Founders will be very valuable to everyone part of this initiative.
We would like to thank Sunil Parekh ( Founder, Global Shapers Initiative, World Economic Forum), Amit Panchal & Ruchit Patel ( Co-Founders, AllEvents.in), Ruchit Surati ( Co-Founder, Locanix ), Kartik Iyer ( Founder, Infigic ), Rutvik Dave ( Co-Founder, RemindMeThis.com ), Hardika Patoliya ( Founder, pH Designs ), U T Rao ( MD, MICA Incubator ), Parth Shah ( Founder, Vivez LifeSciences ), Akash Kotadia ( Founder, encircle.io ), Aditi Gupta & Tuhin Paul ( Co-Founders, Menstrupedia ), Kumar Manish ( Founder, UrbanVoices.in ), Ketan Raval ( Founder, Lets Nurture), Pratik Machchar ( Founder, Vyaap Technologies ), Nadeem Jafri (Chief Mentor, Hearty Mart), Naga Rajan M (DDO, Sabarkantha District, GoG), Hardik Manwani ( Founder, Hmm Web Biz Solutions ), Nishit Jariwala ( Founder, Lysung Ventures ), Suresh Kerai ( Founder, Arkay Apps) and others friends to inspire us to start this initiative.
Eventually we want to get to the stage where we can have "#CoRise Startup of the Week" instead of "#CoRise Startup of the Month" where instead of every month we can give Rs. 1 lac to at least one startup every week. For which we would need 500 entrepreneurs to be part of the #CoRise Ventures team..
You can contact Jatin Chaudhary, CoRiser & Salesman, eChai Ventures at +08238968939 or [email protected] if you believe in our vision and want to be part of the#CoRise Ventures initiative, or just to have an eChai :-)
Join us at our weekly program - #CoRise Ahmedabad @ VentureStudio - on 23rd July, Thursday where MyWedStory team will receive the prize money and to celebrate the #CoRise Movement. Join us to see how entrepreneurs are coming together to celebrate and be part of the rise of fellow startups.
We will also announce the list of 100 Entrepreneurs part of the #CoRise Ventures Team on the same day.
It will be amazing if you can help spread the word about the startups and be the early adopter. Also feel free to ask any specific question to the startups showcased here in comments. You can create your profile at eChai.in to comment here and get connected with fellow entrepreneurs from all over the world.
#CoRise Startup of the Month - MyWedStory
MyWedStory is a social wedding application that helps you showcase your love story, family, events and the extravagance, simply by creating a custom wedding code and invite all your guests to be a part of all these.
Naimish Sakhpara & Hardik Sondagar are the Co-Founders of MyWedStory. Naimish completed bachelors in Computer Science from Pune University in 2012. He joined the family business of textiles for expansion. Within a year he realized that he wanted to do something he would love to do for lifetime and switched back to IT.
Later Naimish joined Gridle as Junior Web Developer in June 2013, where he met his co-founder Hardik Sondagar. In 1 year, he moved up the ladder and became Product manager. During these days, he and Hardik started sharing the enthusiasm for making simple utility solutions using technology.
Finally, the startup bug bit them and they co-founded MyWedStory. Currently they are incubated at MICA Incubator.
Here is the brief QnA with them about MyWedStory.
How did you come up with the idea of 'MyWedStory' ?
Lot of our friends were getting married and we faced common problems in each of them. We became curious to use our technical skills and create a simple solution. It started as Wedding site as a gift to a friend and later we published it as a side project.
What problem are you solving?
A lot of communication channels are used in a wedding viz facebook, whatsapp, phone, invitation card, etc making it a hectic process to co-ordinate. It leads to scattered memories especially photos clicked by the guests which ultimately never get shared. Another major concern is privacy when it comes to weddings and sharing photos on social networks isn't closed group affair anymore. Use of the available web and mobile technology can digitize the wedding by bringing all the guests,photos and excitement at one place making wedding engaging and fun.
How does 'MyWedStory' work?
It's very simple, just visit www.mywedstory.com , create the wedding and choose a unique wedding code. Simply share the code with your guests or send them digital invitations. And you can share all the information about wedding like couple bios,love story, events, accommodation and photos in a private network dedicated to the wedding.
What is your target market?
Soon-to-wed couples, their family, friends and guests are our target users. We would initially target Tier-1,2 cities,luxury weddings and internet user which segments to 1 Million Weddings/Year.
What is your competitive advantage?
We are focused on solving the communication and media sharing problems in a wedding, most importantly making it a better experience for the guests and couple. We have implemented user-friendly models for better engagement, to create more hype before the actual wedding day. MyWedStory is more than just a wedding website and photo sharing platform, it is customized to cater to all the wedding activities.
How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'MyWedStory' to actually launching it in the market ?
We started it as a side project in December last year. After getting a lot of positive feedback and suggestions, we studied the available platforms and problems with them. We took it as a full-time job in April and revamped the complete product concept. We then launched our product in June, taking 3 months to Ideate, design,prototype,test and launch.
Tell us more about your team?
Me and my co-founder Hardik share enthusiasm for creating utility solutions using latest technology and have previously worked in startup ecosystem for past two years undertaking activities from business development to product management.
What is your technology stack?
We are using the already established and proven web technologies, implementing them in most efficient manner.
How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?
The way weddings work is that you have a single person to market to i.e. bride/groom who then amplifies this message and drives the product to other users. We already have digital marketing strategies planned and would be approaching shaadi vendors with our referral program shortly.
What is the revenue model of 'MyWedStory' ?
Our revenues would come from printed merchandise, referring premium wedding services and introducing paid features.
What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?
As soon a couple gets engaged or start planning their wedding, they start using MyWedStory! We want to improve the whole wedding experience by introducing technology in every possible aspect.
What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?
We would like the community to use our product and refer us to as many people possible. Their valuable feedback and suggestions would help us to keep improving. We are also open for collaboration with service providers in wedding industry.
