What is the meaning of WedHaven? What is the inspirational story behind this launch?
The name WedHaven is formed using two words: Wedding (ofcourse) and Haven, which means a safe space. So we wanted to create a platform where you can easily manage a wedding digitally, and forget about all your worries, thus entrusting us with all your worries safely. Also, it sounds familiar to heaven, which is often associated with marriages, hence our tagline: Marriages are made in heaven, weddings are managed on WedHaven!
It all began with some form of mayhem or another that we encountered during every Indian wedding we attended or hosted in the past few years. Starting from our own in 2014, when our best friends missed our own baraat because they were a few minutes late and could not “find it”. Followed by a friend’s wedding, where we got stranded at the airport for 1.5 hours due to some miscommunication on the driver’s end. At another destination wedding, trying to take a nap in between 2 ceremonies became challenging as the hotel staff kept calling us with updates.
Being engineers at heart, we realized that this redundant pattern of chaos in weddings must come to an end and that’s how WedHaven was born. WedHaven was founded with the purpose of changing the way weddings have been traditionally managed, using technology to “Connect Hosts, Guests & Planners – on a single platform” and to “Making Weddings Fun” for everyone! WedHaven was launched in March 2020 and is based out of Delhi. Though the times are tough, weddings are still being executed and WedHaven is available no matter what.
How has this app changed logical thinking and systematic work in COVID time?
As we all know, Covid-19 impacted various industries tremendously, with tourism, hospitality and weddings being some of the biggest hit ones. However, it gave rise to a new wave of digitization, which nobody had anticipated at this point. People became a lot more receptive to new technology and ideas, which helped us as our product challenges the status quo around how we manage weddings.
With the restrictions on the guest limit being upto 50, which mainly comprises the family members in our big Indian families, customers felt there wasn’t much need for a wedding management app initially. However, as people started using it, they found it quite useful to be able to keep the guests updated as the situation was very volatile (the state rules kept changing) and being able to easily manage multiple groups of 50 people via the app’s guest management and groups feature.
WedHaven enables users to enjoy the true essence of the wedding by taking command and streamlining numerous tasks at hand via technology. Simplifying the workload, the app creates a digital wedding through the information provided, with details of all the events, venues, timings, real-time updates, sharing the couple’s journey, a personal website, invites and much more. It further allows users to make co-hosts to share the duties, make custom groups, track RSVP status, collect guest images and also moderate all guest activities.
With WedHaven, one doesn’t have to worry about taking care of missing out on guests or forgetting the task in hand, as everything is covered under one holistic app. This makes WedHaven one of the novel Wedding Management apps for both COVID and post-COVID times.
Being a young Entrepreneur, what message do you want to give upcoming budding Entrepreneurs of the young generation?
Be passionate towards your goals and believe in yourself. There will be challenges along the way but embracing failures instead of losing hope in tough times, is what will help you accomplish your goals. Don’t be afraid of taking risks and keep experimenting with your product to suit your customer’s needs. Talking to your customers and understanding their perspective is extremely crucial to building anything new.
As an entrepreneur starting a new business, you will always be learning new things. However, you cannot and should not try to do everything in your business and hire domain experts for the things you don’t know.
So take that plunge and just go for it. No matter the result, the journey will surely be worth it, as you would have gained some valuable life-lessons and priceless experiences to apply to all walks of life in the future.
What’s the most difficult situation Indians faced during the wedding, that this app can resolve at the fingertips?
The major stress faced by everyone hosting a wedding during the pandemic period was dealing with the ever changing government laws, cancelling and rescheduling their weddings and updating everyone with all the details. Staying connected virtually and having a personal digital space just for your wedding, are some of WedHaven’s biggest assets. It provides you with an always connected platform where you can instantly inform all your guests at once of any happenings, engage with everyone on the personalized wall, collect and share pictures in a single gallery and have fun while being socially distanced!
Pre-covid times as well, we’re sure anyone who’s hosted a wedding before would’ve scratched their heads a few dozen times, while trying to coordinate transportation arrangements for their guests, updating the guest list at least 10 times, taking care of all accommodation needs, answering endless queries about when and where each ceremony is taking place, and the list goes on and on. Managing a ‘Big Fat Indian Wedding’ is not an easy affair and comes with its fair share of challenges, which we aim at resolving with our below range of features:
- Guest management – You can simply import your phone contacts into the app and create a guest list instantly. Hosts can create groups of guests and invite them to specific functions.
- Personal Website: Share a simple link with your guests, for them to access all the information related to the big day, starting from function details and couple’s pictures to being able to RSVP and provide their travel details, etc. to the hosts.
- Couple Story: Is attending a wedding even complete without knowing the love story behind that I-do? Fill up some quick details and share your journey with all your guests!
- Picture Gallery: Hosts are able to share their pre-wedding shoots and family pictures with all their guests and the guests are able to share the memories they captured with the hosts. No need to download low quality pics from Whatsapp, Facebook, and various other sources now!
- Event Scheduling: Consider this is an online invitation, where all the details about each function’s venue and timing is readily available with directions and is always up-to-date.
- Baraat Live Tracking: Hosts can enable Live Baraat Tracking and share the latest location of the Baraat with all the wedding guests (including the bride’s side).
- Personalized wall & real-time updates: Each wedding has a dedicated social space where the Hosts and Guests can mingle by posting messages, photos and videos. It can be used for just about anything from sharing updates to playing games 🙂
- Co-hosts: Simply put, you are not alone in managing your wedding; you can add any number of people as your co-hosts and have them manage various aspects, right from the app!
- Security and moderation: All your data is secure and only accessible by people who you allow, there is also built in moderation for who all can join the wedding and see the details. Hosts are in control of everything!
After the successful launch of WedHaven, do you have any other projects aligned?
WedHaven has only begun its journey and we have a long way to go! Apart from constantly adding new features to give our customers the best experience possible, we soon plan to expand internationally as well. Once we are stable, we plan to continue digital disruption of the event management space, outside of weddings as well.
