Sabin Rodriguez quit his job with an MNC and had no clue what he was going to do. He wanted to start something on his own and was attending start-up seminars in Chennai and Bangalore. He knew what it would be when his cousin called him asking for help to book a banquet hall for her dad’s birthday. “Being a foodie, I know almost every restaurant in the city. I thought finding a hall would be easy, but I was surprised when I really got down to the job. Finding a venue for an event, I realised, was time-consuming. I spent about four hours searching, even travelled 50 km and visited just three different venues. It took me more than a week to finalise one,” says Sabin. He shared this daunting experience with a friend. “We had the business plan ready in an hour.”
After a month into the idea, Sabin realised that without technical help they would not go far. “Utkarsh Singhania was an obvious choice. I had known him for almost eight years and he had experience in product development. It took me only a few minutes to convince him. We went fulltime into the venture three months later,” says Sabin. They created BigFday, a website that helps people book venues for various events. “We run around the city collecting details about the venue like seating capacity, menu choices, size of the hall and more. We try to do a thorough job. People can even find out if the venue allows homam or not. We also send photographers to the venue to shoot high quality photographs,” explains Sabin. They also help in negotiating the rent.
It’s just the beginning and he says they are still learning. “This market is completely unorganised and all the transactions happen offline. When we started, people weren’t interested in this model. It took quite a lot of convincing. Things have changed since then. Today, we have over 500 venues signed up with us in Chennai and they give good discounts to customers,” he adds. The team plans to spread their wings further and include kalyana mandapams, beach houses and party lawns in their venue list.
