Zuddl raises $13.35 mn in Series A funding led by Alpa Wave Incubation

The all-in-one platform for virtual and hybrid events, Zuddl announced it has closed $13.35 million 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.

Born in the pandemic, 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 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.

“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.

The virtual events market space is expected to grow at about 24 per cent CAGR over the next few years according to research firm, Grand View Research. According to LinkedIn’s research, event marketers anticipate that over 65 per cent of the events in the near future, would be either virtual or hybrid.

“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 customisability, control and engagement to virtual and hybrid events, without making it complicated for the event organisers. 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, senior director, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc and managing director at Qualcomm Ventures.

“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 offerings standout in a highly crowded space," added Manu Rikhye, partner, GrowX Venture.