95% layoffs, investor refunds, and a quest for survival: Inside Hubilo's struggle to find a new market fit

Once hailed as a unique startup in the virtual events industry in India, Hubilo dazzled with its promise of connecting people worldwide. It rode a wave of investor confidence with sky-high valuations and rapid growth. But that momentum turned!

With 95 percent of its workforce gone, investors refunded, and a roadmap now replaced by a desperate search for relevance, Hubilo has pivoted, once again, to a webinar platform.

“The firm which used to run with around 500 employees started layoffs last year. There are now hardly 90-100 people working at the engineering and product team,” said several former employees requesting anonymity.

To be sure, the firm presently has around 90-100 employees which is a mix of on-roll and contract employees like freelance professionals, the sources told.

In January of 2023, Hubilo also laid off around 35 per cent of its workforce or around 115 employees across operations.

“We were told that the firm is struggling to find product market fit post-pandemic and most of us were over-hired,” another former employee added.

Moneycontrol reached out to Hubilo and minutes after sending official queries on November 12, the founder posted a statement on LinkedIn.

“However, as the pandemic started to wean off, so did our initial customers. We saw about 60-70 percent churn in our virtual event customers but were still hopeful that we’d make it up,” he wrote.

Jain recently stepped down from the role of CEO and took up the role as chairman. Shailesh Hegde was appointed as the CEO of Hubilo on April 2024.

Hubilo’s founder and chairman Vaibhav Jain said that the firm is still running with a new business model.

“We are still very much running, we have pivoted to a new business model. We returned around $75 million to all our investors and we now have customers with more than 10 million in revenues looking for webinar tools,” Jain told Moneycontrol.

Hubilo’s journey

Hubilo was founded in 2015 by Vaibhav Jain in Ahmedabad, originally as a networking tool for physical events.

The platform was initially designed to streamline the organisation and management of in-person conferences, aiming to make it easier for attendees to connect, network, and engage. However, Hubilo’s original model struggled to gain traction in a market already saturated with event management software.

Everything changed in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global gatherings and brought the physical events industry to a standstill. Recognizing a unique opportunity, Hubilo quickly pivoted to focus on virtual events.

This shift allowed the company to capitalise on the sudden demand for online event platforms, as conferences, networking events, and summits moved online. Hubilo’s swift adaptation earned it a reputation as a reliable, user-friendly platform for hosting virtual events.

“We were part of the team when Hubilo started hiring for virtual events business. The business took off well and we were hopeful that this will continue. The company was also taking care of offline physical events on the side,” said an employee quoted above.

Higher valuation trouble

The pivot was remarkably successful and investors took note.  The company secured substantial funding rounds, with significant backing from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital.

Hubilo soon became one of the leading platforms in the virtual events space, boasting clients across industries and quickly scaling its team to support the growth.

However, as the world began to reopen and in-person events returned, the demand for virtual-only platforms like Hubilo started to wane.

“Hubilo raised funding too fast, the firm’s valuations in the last round was nearly 30-40X its revenue. The firm could not maintain this revenue multiple and had to pivot to survive,” said an investor on the condition of anonymity.

Hubilo found itself facing an urgent need to reinvent yet again, with the company now grappling with layoffs, returning investor funds, and a challenging search for a new product-market fit in a post-pandemic landscape.

“As a company are still strong in terms of our numbers, product, support, growth and innovation… We quickly understood that there is no tailwind that we previously had during Covid times and it will take a much longer time to grow into our previous valuation,” Jain wrote on LinkedIn.

As per filings with RoCy, the firm's net loss jumped 2.75 times to Rs 52 crores as against a loss of Rs crores in FY22. The firm's consolidated revenue during FY23 was around Rs 56 crores.

Hubilo’s pivot

While several industry sources told Moneycontrol that the firm is looking for a buyer and has approached a few SaaS firm, Jain said that the firm has pivoted to offering webinar tools to its customers.

“We are not looking to sell, we are finding PMF and we also have some customers with more than 10 million dollars in revenue as of now. We are currently running the firm with 100 employees,” Jain said.

Jain also said that the firm has offered ESOPs to all its eligible employees.

“Our ESOPs became much more relevant as we recapped the company to its true valuation. We also awarded more stocks to our employees to show them a wealth-creation path within Hubilo. And our customers still have access to the product that have loved since the past 4 years, giving us a 4.6 rating on G2,” he added.

Outlook

Hubilo's investors include prominent venture capital firms such as Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital, which played key roles in the company’s growth during its virtual events pivot.

Lightspeed led Hubilo's Series A round in 2020, recognizing the platform’s potential amid the pandemic's virtual events surge, while Balderton co-led the Series B round in 2021, further solidifying support as the platform scaled. Other investors include Alkeon Capital, which joined the Series B round to help fuel Hubilo’s rapid expansion

The firm also counts angel investors like  Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham; former LinkedIn India CEO Nishant Rao; Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle; and Helpshift CEO Abinash Tripathy.

The founder has said that the firm will continue to offer webinar tools to its customers and will look to return the entire capital to investors.

“Investors who came in our last round would have to wait for about 6-7 years to make 1x of their capital. They contributed almost 75% of the total funds,” Jain said.