VenueLook is an Events Services company founded by Ruchi Garg in 2013. This startup is trying to change the way venues are shortlisted and booked in India. They are an online marketplace that connects people who are looking for a perfect venue for their event with the venue owners that have a matching space to offer.

VenueLook helps people find, shortlist, enquire and book venues. People can share their event details and preferences to receive quotes from multiple matching venues!

Ruchi Garg completed Computer Science engineering from C.R.S.C.E., Murthal, M.D.U. in the year 1998. Ruchi then worked as a Project Leaders with STMicroelectronics for more than 7 years. Ruchi has also co-founded EventEve.com prior to VenueLook.

In an exclusive interview with CrazyEngineers.com, we got Ruchi to talk about her experiences at VenueLook, her educational and professional background, her first entrepreneurial venture - EventEve.com, the biggest personal change she ever made and how it helped her as an entrepreneur, the team's core values and goals at VenueLook and a lot more. Read on!

CE: Hi Ruchi. Could you give our readers a brief overview of VenueLook?

Ruchi: VenueLook (www.venuelook.com) is an Online-to-Offline Local Marketplace disrupting the Venue Discovery and Booking process for Social and Corporate Events! Currently VenueLook is the #1 venue booking site in Delhi-NCR working with 1000+ venues.

The journey of every event be it - a wedding, a birthday, a get-together, a farewell, a corporate event, a brand promotion, a conference - planning begins with a venue. We help people at this very first step of finding the perfect venue for their event!

Venues on the platform currently range from Farm houses, Banquets, Hotels, Clubs, Pubs, Restaurants, Auditoriums to Art Galleries, Resorts and more.

The traditional venue booking takes 16-20 hrs spread across several weeks to find the perfect venue after dealing with several haggling on price, commitment to the quality and service from the venue managers. VenueLook promises to make this process seamless, quick and friendly leading to 10X improvement!

CE: Could you tell our readers about your educational and professional background?

Ruchi: I completed my Computer science engineering in 1998. I have 12+ years of experience in Product management, creating high-performing teams, managing online marketing and operations. I started my career with ST Microelectronics, leading and building software products for ST-Worldwide from India and France. After 7 good years of service, it was time to pursue my dream of building a business from scratch, solving a real problem for the masses and contributing towards making happy occasions happier.

CE: Could you tell us about your other entrepreneurial venture - EventEve.com? 

Ruchi: EventEve.com is a free online invitations and e-cards website, started from home with a virtual team in 2009. Inspired by Evite, this was my first entrepreneurial venture. It felt very good socially to share a part of the “happiness” associated with social events’ planning. As we started to scale VenueLook we had to take a hard decision to pull off EventEve from active support.

CE:  What is the biggest personal change you have ever made? How has it helped you as an entrepreneur?

Ruchi: Since childhood I have always looked at challenges and thought “it is going to be interesting...”

As an entrepreneur, there are times when you are filled with positive enthusiasm and there are moments when you feel bogged down “managing chaos” and “fire fighting” for weeks. The biggest personal change that I have made is that I have accepted the fact that it is going to be a roller coaster for a while and that chaos in the early stages of a startup venture is “a way of life”.

Having made peace with the challenges (expected and un-expected), I smile more often and sleep peacefully, dreaming about VenueLook and its success ;p

CE:  What are your core values and goals at VenueLook?

Ruchi: At VenueLook, our 5 core values are Innovation, Openness, Change, Ownership and Honesty. We follow a “No Doors” policy i.e. once you are inside the main entrance. J

Our Goal is to spread happiness and become the #1 Social Events Hub in India before we move global.

CE:  What are the key milestones at VenueLook for the next 6-12 months that need to be achieved?

Ruchi: Following are the key milestones we target to achieve in next 12 months -

• 10X improvement in Consumer Experience for Venue Discovery and Bookings
• Drive seamless Mobile based Bookings
• Optimize, Partner and Grow to become the #1 Social Events Hub in India

CE:  What one and only one thing an Entrepreneur must have in his/her mind?

Ruchi: 

Clarity of strategic objectives and corresponding deliverables to succeed in a given time frame.

CE:  Tell us about a time when you realized your leadership at VenueLook went wrong? How did you rectify it?

Ruchi: For about a month, I got deeply involved in operations and manual deep dive into data. This left me with almost no time to focus on the roadmap ahead. We have rectified the same by establishing measurements, processes and analytics on top of our data that we track via technology now to improve continuously.

CE:  What makes VenueLook different from its competitors? Who according to you are your biggest competitors?

Ruchi: The difference as always lies in the approach we take to solve problems and the pace at which we execute. We put a smart process, a methodology to test out our first set of solutions, measure them, track them for a while, take data-driven decisions to iterate and move forward to next cycle of testing and iteration. Our team’s passion and commitment towards making VenueLook a big business is our strength.

Our biggest competitor is JustDial.

CE:  Thank you for your time. Any message for CrazyEngineers?

Ruchi: CrazyEngineers is a great platform for engineers to share ideas and advice. You guys are doing a good job in supporting the startup community in India, keep it up!

For Readers - If u love to growth hack to become largest events destination and spread happiness on the way join us!

For venue hunt or partnership, feel free to write to us at info@venuelook.com or call our Hotline number +91-8470-804-805. 

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