NDTV forays into online wedding market with Special Occasion Ltd

US based venture capital firm, CerraCap Ventures has invested in the forthcoming wedding venture Special Occasion Ltd putting the valuation of the platform at USD 20 mn. Sports marketing firm Baseline is also looking to invest in the platform to be helmed by CEO Sachin Singhal

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | December 7, 2015

NDTV's Special Occasion Limited, a wedding and festival platform, has raised funding at a valuation of USD 20 million. A US based venture capital firm, CerraCap Ventures has invested in NDTV's forthcoming wedding venture. “The wedding industry in India is a $40bn market which is highly disorganized and has operated the same way for decades. With India's growing tech- savvy population, this market is ripe for disruption. Special Occasion has the right team, vision and platform to enable this disruption and be a leader in this space” said SaurabhSuri, Managing Partner,CerraCap Ventures.

Smeeta Chakrabarti

Smeeta Chakrabarti, President, Revenue NDTV Group, said, “I am delighted to welcome CerraCap and SaurabhSuri as a partner in this exciting venture. The wedding business in India is growing by 20% year- on- year. There are 10 million weddings every year in India and this is a massive opportunity. Not just weddings, festival spending is also huge and this platform will be the go-to destination when you are getting married or attending a wedding or celebrating any special occasion.”

According to Tuhin Mishra, Managing Director of Baseline, a sports marketing, entertainment and licensing firm responsible for the partnership between NDTV andCerraCap, “It is always a pleasure to work with an NDTV enterprise and to facilitate CerraCap's foray into this venture of NDTV. We are very excited with this tie- up and are so gung-ho about the concept of wedding and festival ecommerce that Baseline too would be investing into this.”

NDTV has also announced the appointment of Sachin Singhal as CEO of Special Occasion Ltd. With 10 years of experience in key start-ups in the country, Sachin has been instrumental in setting and scaling up leading brands like naaptol.com, and letsbuy.com among others. Sachin is a technology entrepreneur and started his career with Tata Consultancy Services.

Sachin Singhal said, “People are looking for answers on how to achieve their dream wedding, how to navigate from dream to reality. The new platform will be a game -changer and will provide 360- degree solutions in the wedding and festival space. With the growing internet population and the adoption of smart phones, this space will disrupt too.”

Vikram Chandra

Speaking about the investment, Vikram Chandra, Group CEO, NDTV, said, “This investment is a validation of our digital strategy.  We have been able to demonstrate our capability with indianroots.com, gadget360.com, carandbike.com, all of which have seen keen investor interest. 'Weddings' is yet another business where we already have a high brand recall through our marquee shows in the wedding space.  We are confident that with CerraCap's investments, we will be able to roll the latest of the NDTV ecommerce ventures, successfully.”

With this launch, NDTV establishes itself more firmly in the digital and ecommerce space.

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