Agora and WedMeGood Reinvent Wedding Experience in the New Normal
BANGALORE: Agora, the leading voice, video, and live streaming platform, has partnered with WedMeGood, a pioneer in India’s wedding marketplace to digitize wedding experiences amidst the pandemic. Featuring over 85,000+ vendors, the startup had to pivot to an online model to ensure business continuity and customer satisfaction when brick-and-mortar stores were forced to shut down. With Agora’s leading video streaming platform, WedMeGood was able to bring the in-store model onto a virtual platform, enabling customers to access India’s top brands at their fingertips.
WedMeGood utilized Agora’s platform for a pilot program to feature live virtual shopping experiences with some of the most successful fashion brands in the bridal industry like Ritu Kumar, Manish Malhotra, Kunal Rawal, Falguni Shane Peacock and Jade by M&K among others. Following the success of the pilot program, the startup has now initiated a series of virtual shopping experiences powered by Agora’s livestream platform, the latest of which was attended by 7,800+ brides. The number of sales generated through these live shopping festivals was over 1,600, with the average sales figure in the range of INR 1 lakh-18 lakh for each merchant.
“Video based ecommerce for high involvement purchases like jewelry and bridal outfits is expected to be the gamechanger in these traditional industries. The pandemic has proven the need to adopt newer business models and we are glad that we were able to pivot quickly with Agora’s solutions. After evaluating over 15 platforms, we selected Agora mainly due to their easy-to-use Android Software Development Kit (SDK) which requires minimal development effort, provides low latency and high-resolution experience. With this, we were able to sustain business momentum despite the pandemic,” said Anand Shahani, CEO & Co-founder, WedMeGood.
India’s 50-billion-dollar wedding industry saw a lull during the early months of lockdown but gained momentum during the latter half of the year, with virtual weddings becoming the norm. Seeing the success of the live shows, WedMeGood now plans to extend this model to similar large ticket portfolios like jewelry.
“Our partnership with WedMeGood is an exciting opportunity and the first step towards digitizing the wedding segment,” said Ranganath Jagannath, Director-Growth, Agora. “Real-time engagement (RTE) has enabled business continuity amidst the lockdown not just for companies like WedMeGood but also for the vendors and partners they are associated with. This heralds a new age of experiential ecommerce – a time where high value purchase decisions can be made from the comfort of one’s home without compromising on the experience of shopping.”
Featured on Netflix’s hit show, The Big Day, WedMeGood has a funding of $3.08 million, with the latest round from Orchid Asia Group in April 2019. Their platform connects to be wed couples to renowned wedding vendors of categories ranging from bridal makeup artists, wedding photographers to wedding venues, wedding planners, decorators etc.
The sheer diversity of information that comes across on live video chat makes it the clear winner for engaging in rich conversations. Real Time Engagement enables consumers to share the same space and experience the same sounds and sights, thereby helping brands build and strengthen bonds with customers.
Agora’s industry-leading software development kits, (SDKs) enable developers to embed crystal-clear voice and video into any application. Powered by its proprietary Software Defined Real-Time Network (SD-RTN™), Agora utilizes machine learning algorithms to dynamically route transmissions across 250 globally distributed data centers, which ensures high-definition, low latency voice, and video communications to end users regardless of their geographic location, device type, and network condition.
