Profitable event tech startup by NUS NOC alums eyes global expansion

In 2012, Kuan Yan Tan and his two friends went to Stockholm for the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) program.

Like their NOC batchmates – the founders of classifieds giant Carousell and rewards platform ShopBack – the three ended up becoming founders, starting an event tech firm called Jublia in 2013.

“We went to events but were always left wanting due to the lack of methods to engage better,” said Tan, who serves as Jublia’s CEO. “Essentially, you go into an event and speak to the first person you meet.”

Jublia co-founders Chinab Chugh, Kuan Yan Tan, and Errol Lim / Image credit: Timmy Loen

At the time, event tech was a nascent field dependent on traditional, non-SaaS IT models. The Jublia team didn’t find any solutions that served its specific needs, so it decided to build one “perhaps a little naively, just out of university.”

But event tech wasn’t a major tech vertical, and MICE wasn’t an industry that VCs understood well either, especially 10 years ago, added Tan. So, unlike Carousell and ShopBack, Jublia hasn’t raised over US$300 million in funding.

What it has done instead is bootstrap its way into profitability. The Singapore-headquartered company, which designed an AI-powered solution for conference participants to engage better, has been in the black for the past seven to eight years, with revenues in the single-digit millions.

“For bootstrapped companies, margins are pretty much investment funds, so this has helped build an arsenal to expand our team into China and the US,” Tan said.

Here’s our conversation with Tan, which was edited for clarity.

What’s the elevator pitch for your startup?

Jublia is an event engagement hub that empowers organizers to intelligently connect people and content at their events.

What’s your pitch to customers? Why should they use your solution over alternatives?

We were the first to introduce AI-powered business matchmaking to the industry.

We empower live events with smart digital tools that help attendees, sponsors, and organizers achieve return on participation as well as return on time. We do this with integrated solutions like interactive maps, lead retrieval, and behavior analytics.