FEST CONNECT
Connect. Celebrate. Create
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Connect. Celebrate. Create
Most colleges — Google Forms, WhatsApp, UPI screenshots. Rebuilt from scratch every year.
Some colleges — own ticketing site. Crashes under load. No brand or vendor integration.
Every college — still calling vendors manually, cold-calling brands from zero, every year.
Zero colleges — have one platform connecting registrations, brands, and vendors together.
Registrations — Google Forms + UPI screenshots verified manually. 5 events = 5 forms. 14 WhatsApp groups.
Brands — 3–4 months cold-calling. Most don't pick up. Big brands go to IITs. Everyone else gets ignored.
Vendors — Quotes are opaque, inflated, change last minute. One called at midnight demanding more money.
At the gate — Students queue 3 hours. Forged IDs. No data. No crowd management. Pure chaos.
[ Tap stack to view evidence ]
Massive brand, massive budget. Zero data on which colleges had their target customer. Went on gut feeling. Campaign underperformed.
Bike trial activation at IIT Delhi. Huge budget. Only discovered after — students aren't allowed to drive bikes on campus. Activation failed.
Fest Connect gives brands the college intelligence layer that has never existed — before they spend a single rupee.
A Delhi University college fest embedded brand activations directly inside their Google registration form. To enter the fest, students had to download CARS24, give it 4-5 stars, write a review, and upload a screenshot as proof.
[ Tap to view evidence screenshots ]
This is what ₹X of brand spend looks like today. Fest Connect replaces jugaad with infrastructure.
The result: poor shows, bad memories, wasted crores.
[ Tap to view status quo evidence ]
45,000 colleges in India (Source: AISHE 2021–22)
~33% host fests annually = 15,000 fests
Average fest budget: ₹20 Lakhs
15,000 × ₹20L = ₹30,000 Cr ecosystem
Our commission layer on top = ₹1,500 Cr revenue TAM
Even colleges with partial solutions only address ticketing — 15% of the ecosystem. The remaining 85% (brands + vendors) has no platform. That's where we play.
India Live Events Market: ₹88B (2023) → ₹143B (2026) · CAGR 17.6%
We are not claiming the ecosystem. We are claiming the infrastructure fee on top of it.
→ Single dashboard: registrations, ticketing, certificates, crowd data, judge scoring
→ Website integration — colleges keep their own site, plug in our registration and payment layer.
→ Access to brand contact database + templated outreach tools — no more 3 months of cold calls
→ Self-serve portal: browse fests by city and audience size, book activations in 3 clicks
→ Run online campaigns on platform before the fest, book offline activations during, get combined reach data after — one platform, full funnel
→ Transparent marketplace: verified rates listed publicly, no hidden negotiations
→ Structured booking: requirements, timelines, and payment terms agreed on platform before work begins
Nothing like this exists.
Manual Gate Chaos — 3 hour queues, manual ticket verification, forged IDs, zero security.
Manual Payments — Verifying thousands of UPI screenshots on WhatsApp group. High chance of error.
Zero Data — Fest ends, committee goes home. No institutional memory for the next batches.
Offline-first QR scanning — internet goes down, scanning doesn't. Built for the reality of high-load events.
Automated Flow — from UPI verification to gate scan to certificate generation. One unified platform.
Government of India has officially declared the creative & events industry a priority sector. Policy tailwinds, potential subsidies, institutional support.
Source: PIB, 2026India's live events market: ₹88B (2023) → ₹143B (2026) at CAGR 17.6%. Post-COVID Gen Z is desperate for IRL experiences.
Source: Indian Express, 2024Unstop does listings. BookMyShow does ticketing. Agencies do brands — badly. No one has connected all three. That gap is what we're filling before anyone else does.
Zero cost to colleges.
| Stream | Rate | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Ticketing Commission | 5% GMV | Live |
| Brand Sponsorship | 10% deal value | Building |
| Vendor Marketplace | 5% bookings | Building |
| Digital Ads (CPC) | Per click | Pipeline |
| Stall Space Selling | Fixed fee | Future |
| Own Artist Management | Margin | Future |
| Own Infra | Margin | Future |
Every college we add makes the platform more valuable to brands.
Every brand makes it more attractive to colleges.
Every vendor booking adds pricing data no competitor can buy.
The network compounds. The moat deepens.
Today we take a commission.
Tomorrow we own the margin.
Sep — East, NE, some North
Oct–Dec — North India cultural fests
Jan–Apr — South India + Delhi + North India technical fests
May–Jul — West India + South India
4 regional salespeople deployed by season
→ Lead with free registration software
→ Non-tech colleges first
→ Campus ambassadors + perks
→ Tech colleges after brand + vendor marketplace is live
→ Focus: Fashion Brands
"When a student buys a ticket, next they think: what to wear"
→ Slayd (signed), Snitch, Zudio
→ Self-serve dashboard
→ Expand category by category
→ 6–7 players dominate college artist management in India
→ Already have relationships with 4–5 of the biggest (Tribe Vibe, Urban Aura, Cosanostra, Stage It Right)
→ Beta: students express interest in an artist → get a rough quote
→ Then onboard infra vendors for direct bookings
MNNIT Allahabad · IIIT Delhi · MAMC Delhi
Brand: Slayd (signed)
Vendors: Stage It Right, Tribe Vibe, Cosanostra Live, Urban Aura — onboarding in progress
"4 colleges in one season. Next season we go to 40. This funding makes that happen."
Google Forms, UPI screenshots, manual verification, 14 WhatsApp groups
Single dashboard, automated registrations, gate cleared in 45 minutes. Post-fest: Certificates auto-generated.
Cold calls from random students. No data. A blurry photo on WhatsApp as the report.
Self-serve dashboard, filters fests by audience, books in 3 clicks. Real-time footfall data during fest.
Students share rates with competitors. Payments delayed. Requirements unclear.
Listed with verified rates. Requirements and payment locked upfront via escrow on platform.
| Competitor | Registrations | Ticketing | Brand | Vendor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fest Connect | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unstop | ✗ | ✓ | Partial | ✗ |
| BookMyShow / Townscript | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| District | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Under25 | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| KonfHub | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Campus Agencies(Tribe Vibe, Spectal, etc.) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| ⚠ FestBuzz | Partial | Partial | ✗ | ✗ |
Townscript charges colleges ₹15K–₹1L in marketing fees on top of ticket commissions. We charge colleges nothing.
FestBuzz is our direct competitor — same model, same background as our founder. They are moving.
This window won't stay open.
IIT Roorkee · 5+ yrs in college fests as organiser, artist manager, production head · Built Fest Connect from scratch · Produced Thomso '24 — Sunidhi Chauhan's most viral college show
Thomso'24 — Sunidhi Chauhan · 198K likes · IIT Roorkee's most viral college show
12+ yrs in beverage & manufacturing ops · Runs Ekadrishta Products & Hospitality · Personally funding early operations
In-house full-stack engineering — all core product modules
Software can be copied. Trust can't. FestBuzz has the same idea. They don't have the relations. They don't have the Thomso credit.
Confirmed relationships with 4–5 of India's top 6–7 artist management companies
Every fest we run adds data no competitor can buy — attendance patterns, brand ROI, vendor ratings
We've been the organiser who couldn't sleep. We've stood at the gate at 2am. We've dealt with the artist manager who demanded more money an hour before showtime.
The only team building a full-stack platform AND holding the industry's trust simultaneously.
Equity and terms on conversation.
150+ colleges onboarded across India
Brand marketplace live & transacting
Vendor marketplace beta — 10+ cities
₹1.1CR+ annual revenue run rate
Fest Connect powers 5,000 college festivals across India.
Brands don't cold call colleges. They log in.
Every top college fest committee uses our platform the way airlines use booking systems — they can't imagine doing it any other way.
The student who registered for Resonance at MNNIT in 2025 is now a Brand Manager at Pepsi. She still uses Fest Connect — now on the brand side.
And somewhere in India, a 22-year-old Cultural Secretary Arjun is dancing at his own fest. For the first time.
We didn't just build software.
We became the connective tissue of India's youth economy.
Let's build the future of the Youth Economy together.
raghav@festconnect.in
+91 84309 84307
