An Interview with Founder & CEO of WeddingPlz.com, Manas Wadhwa

Ans. Yes definitely we have some uniqueness in our business. What makes Weddingplz.com unique is that it is the only wedding portal that smoothly integrates everything that’s required to plan and organize a wedding such as local vendor search, genuine couple reviews, upcoming wedding events & exhibitions, Vendor deals & discounts for customers to amazing wedding planning tools like creating your own wedding website and e-Invites, into a single website, thus helping the to-be-wed couples – search manage and organize everything for their wedding online.

Ans. People are getting tech-savvy now and start-ups are working hard to establish their authority online and finding cost-effective ways of reaching out to people.

The best way to do this is of course firstly by having a good SEO of your company; it can be done both individually or team wise. Blog posting is another way for a faster and more targeted reach. Having an email campaign in place with attractive and targeted content, press releases and being interactive on other websites are yet other ways of reaching people online.

Last but not least is Social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram which becomes mandatory if you want to promote yourself online. Interacting with your target audience, brands, customers, industry bloggers or whoever is related to you in any way is always a good idea and a very effective way to get recognition in market.

Ans. I believe it is not really right to say which one is better as all such platforms have their own relevance. Instead of questioning which one is better, I suppose we should question, ‘how can we use them for the best outcome’. Instead of approaching each channel separately, these areas must be managed simultaneously in coordination with each other in order to get more subscribers.

Some of the things that can be done are:

• Link your social media with email subscribers by adding people who have already subscribed your product to your social platforms. This will get a little more personal connect with them.
• It is said that ‘more the likes or share on the social network, better is the product’. Send as many newsletters as u can to ask the users to subscribe and make sure u include social icons in the body of the mail so that maximum shares can be grabbed. Ones the number of share/tweet/like is increased, u can reach out to various sites to promote your product.
• Giving social proof to people by increasing the number of testimonials or reviews of your product/service as they form a crucial aspect of any purchasing decision.

Ans.Expansion of WeddingPlz, both in terms of Geographic expansion and Product expansion is our foremost agenda and we are aggressively pursuing it. Started with Delhi last year, we have launched in 4 more cities till now, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Bangalore recently. Moving ahead, we have plans to launch in 2 more cities by the mid of 2016 and an all India presence along with our own wedding directory is our plan by Dec 2016. Besides this, in terms of product expansion we are planning to launch Mobile App by the end of this year.

Being a vendor discovery platform that houses everything that’s required to plan and organize a wedding into a single website. Weddingplz intends to change the way weddings are planned and organized in India. With more than 3 lakh to-be-weds visiting us every month, our sole aim is to make Weddingplz synonymous with weddings.

Ans.I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. To me entrepreneurship is about having the freedom to solve a problem in my way. As an entrepreneur I am not a backseat driver – I actually do something if the problem I see has scale and I think I can solve it. I like the fact that every action that I take has a direct impact on the outcome of business. Each and every thing that I do can make or break it. I love understanding the consumer needs and thinking of the ways to fulfill the gap by creating my own business model.

My advice to the young entrepreneurs would be – Follow your passion! The Best Way To Predict The Future Is To Create It!!!

“It was fantastic talking to you Mr. Manas. Thank you so much for your time and providing us valuable information. Team DSIM wishes you all the best for your future.”