Onspon.com bridges the information and access gap between brands and events

“Onspon.com bridges the information and access gap between brands
and events”, Hitesh
Gossain, Founder & CEO of onspon.com

Hitesh Gossain, Founder & CEO of onspon.com

ST Bureau: When did you
decide to take the path of ‘entrepreneurship’ as your career? Do you remember
any special incident?

Hitesh Gossain: It all started when I was managing sponsors ships for the events
at IIM Ahmedabad and realised that despite me being from one of the most
premier institutes of India – it was a challenge. When I took a job and was on
other side – realised sourcing of sponsorships is a equally big challenge.
Hence a perfect opportunity to create a responsive marketplace based on
information arbitrage and knowledge enhancement

ST Bureau: Can you
briefly tell us more about your startup?

Hitesh Gossain: Onspon.com bridges the information and access gap between brands
and events. 450+ brands use Onspon to evaluate some fantastic opportunities;
right from a B2C exhibition having 1,00,000 footfalls to a corporate engagement
platform reaching 100+ offices, children content reaching 20,000+ schools, to all major leagues – ISL , IPL , Pro
Kabaddi etc. The problem of sponsorship raising is everywhere – and we
understood it soon.

Onspon has been rated as an exhaustive high quality platform for
assessing the best partnership opportunities across 7000+ avenues. The best
part is, that its a marketplace model – hence no ‘sales pitches’ – we are event
agnostic hence brands get what they want.

ST Bureau: How big is
your team at present?

Hitesh Gossain: We are 15 of us spread across 3 locations.

ST Bureau: Did you get
any funding for your startup? Are you planning to attract funding in the near
future?

Hitesh Gossain: Yes, we have already secured early stage funding and are
utilizing them to create products that bridge the technology gap between events
and brands – we shall raise further funds post that.

ST Bureau: What
challenges do you face in your daily professional life?

Hitesh Gossain: As we are trying to disrupt a very archaic media sales setup,
there was a lot of resistance by the agencies who are brand custodians on media
procurement decisions. Event sponsorships happen to be non-traditional media.
Here my experience of working with one of the biggest EMC organizations came
handy and we created a structure where agencies benefit tremendously from our
algorithms and use it to recommend their clients the best partnership
opportunities – which as almost impossible earlier.

To overcome these challenges we have created a unique business
model – brands don’t pay us and we charge for the incremental value which we
add to the events.

ST Bureau: How do you see
yourself in next 2 years from now?

Hitesh Gossain: Growth with focus on value creation. Multi country expansion and
global partnerships. We have following plan for next year:

o
We are launching exclusive B2B sponsorship marketplace

o
Launching a 24X7 call centre for events

o
Technology backbone creation for events to better coordinate on
their technology needs – engagement with all event stakeholders in backend

This will be a rapid scale up backed by tremendous traction on
paying clients – we would definitely look for a second round once the gap
starts coming between the cash outflow and projected revenues – we don’t see
that happening for next 12 months at least as our revenue pipeline growth is
also very promising.

ST Bureau: What are your
hobbies in your personal life? Which is your favorite holiday destination?

Hitesh Gossain: I love to travel and try new cuisines. My idea of travel is to be like a local and
my favourite destinations are Istanbul, Paris and Bangkok.

Interviewed by Startup Terminal Bureau

Tags: Interview