Conglomerate ITC Limited on Thursday reported a 6.6% jump in its fourth quarter standalone revenue from operations at Rs 17,506.08 crore compared to Rs 16,426.00 crore from a year ago period.

The company’s net profit rose 21.4% year over year to Rs 5,086.86 crore while its standalone expenses marginally grew to Rs 11,730.45 crore from a year ago figure of Rs 11,658.05 crore.

The FMCG segment revenue was up 16.2% to Rs 12,300.78 crore from Rs 10, 585.34 crore in the year ago period. The jump in revenue is due to a higher demand for its cigarettes and other consumer goods as India’s largest cigarette maker sees growth from these two categories.

The revenue for the company’s hotel segment also more than doubled as leisure travel scooped higher.

On a yearly basis, revenue from operations rose 17.6% to Rs 70,251.28 crore for the year ended March 31, 2023.

Event management platform Swoogo which offers unlimited registrations and events, email marketing automation, a drag-and-drop website builder, native analytics, and more was among the top exhibitors at ETL Las Vegas.

Swoogo makes it easy to integrate with other event software, CRMs, and marketing platforms, often natively. The techstack is so cooperative you can treat Swoogo as an end-to-end platform, or use us headless as an API plug. 

“We serve a global array of companies—large and small—with bespoke features that give you control over your events and data. All with top-of-the-industry security and compliance”, said Chris Sykes, CEO, Swoogo.

As more and more companies realize the incredible potential of event-driven growth, event professionals need better tools to stand out and lead their markets. Created for event profs, by event profs, Swoogo believes in empowering anyone to bring people together, with mindfully designed event tech.

At the Event Tech Live 2023 in Las Vegas, Canopy Event Tech's co-founder Steve Graceburg spoke about the need to stay away from forcing virtual solutions on on-site events.

"Organising an onsite event is a serious undertaking, and if you try and force a virtual platform on top of that without contextualising its need or impact, I think you're failing" he said.

Canopy's success in providing an excellent on-site experience has earned it clients from across the world.

When asked about the new things that Canopy offers, Graceburg mentioned that the company's unique approach lies in its international mindset. "We are equally split in terms of staff and resources around Asia, Europe, and the US. Our headquarters is actually in Singapore. We offer 70 different languages with the click of a button, obviously using artificial intelligence for the translation. But we can also then improve upon the artificial intelligence and create it for the states in our back-office dictionary, which is available to our users," he said.

Canopy's ability to provide accurate translations in multiple languages, including the ability to have audio and human translation added to life for gaming, has set it apart from other event platforms. The company's close captions and the ability to stream and translate to China to both platforms also make it unique. Graceburg concluded, "We think internationally first, and that's what makes Canopy unique."

Canopy's success in providing an excellent on-site experience while also catering to remote attendees has established it as a leading event tech platform. The company's international approach and unique offerings make it a top choice for organisations around the world.

Leading event tech company Hubilo Technologies has purchased on-site event tech provider Fielddrive in an effort to bolster its in-person event solutions. With access to greater resources, data and market insights, the combined company aims to deliver leading products and customer experiences as well as attract more top talent.

“The two companies combined really pools our products, expertise and talent, ensuring that we can deliver digital, hybrid and in-person events anywhere in the world,” said Vaibhav Jain, founder and CEO of Hubilo, adding that fielddrive will run as an independent entity and will continue to be platform agnostic. “fielddrive’s dedication to customers aligns with our customer-first approach, and our aim is to continue to meet and exceed our customers’ needs by providing technology that enables exceptional event experiences regardless of location, budget or format.”

Hubilo, established five years ago, has raised more than $150 million from leading venture capital firms and delivered virtual and hybrid event experiences in more than 185 countries with more than two million attendees.

Fielddrive supports event organisers globally with sustainable solutions to delight their attendees with the best visitor flow management, all of which can be deployed in any location, venue and event type.

“With additional resources we will be able to grow our solution set across more geographies with new market-leading features,” said Danny Stevens, founder and CEO of Fielddrive. “The acquisition means that we can continue to innovate further in this space to provide our customers with unbeatable visitor experiences.”

As Hubilo looks to grow further within the in-person space, Sophie Ahmed, formerly Hubilo’s senior vice president of market strategy has become general manager of Hubilo Onsite, leading fielddrive for Hubilo.

“Having led large in-person events for over two decades, I can see why Fielddrive is so attractive to event organisers, [with] managing visitor queues, facial recognition for onsite check-in, sustainable badging, lead retrieval and analytics, new monetisation opportunities and an expert customer experience team,” Ahmed said. “This is a fantastic acquisition for Hubilo, and we have lots of exciting things planned on our roadmap as we push the boundaries in creating incredible event journeys for organisers and their attendees, exhibitors and sponsors.”

On the first day of ETL Las Vegas, multilingual meeting technology and services provider Interprefy unveiled Interprefy Aivia, the world’s first advanced automated speech translation service for online and live events, at Event Tech Live in Las Vegas.

The great thing about Aivia is that it is able to pick up and translate speech in real-time, the artificial intelligence (AI) based real-time translation solution is the first of its kind to be made available to the public, bringing accurate, AI-translated audio and captions to global audiences at the touch of a button.

The solution will be available in 24 languages and regional accents initially, with many more to come in the near future, and is immediately available for in-person audiences as well as for major platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and ON24.

Event registration can make or break the success of an event. That's why it's important to make it easy for attendees to register, according to Kate Schacht, Director of US Sales at Eventsforce Solution

While speaking to BW Applause and Everything Experiential, she said "If it takes me an hour to register for an event, it's likely that I'm not going to register," "My suggestion would be to make registration easy. Open it up to a window. After that opens up to your education and your content. So that way it is seamless," she added.

To make the registration process even more convenient, she recommended using QR codes to enable one-click registration. This method would be particularly useful for open-door meetings where attendees are looking to register on the day of the event.

As a Director of Sales, Schacht also emphasised the importance of group bookings, as it saves time and captures revenue right away.

In her view, promoting on social media is also key to attracting attendees, she suggested to event planners and marketers, "Don't be afraid to get on Facebook and TikTok, LinkedIn is not the only place that you can advertise," she said. "Incentivise them with an early bird package. If you buy now, you get this."

Schacht also emphasised the importance of event tech and retargeting attendees with relevant content. "Additionally, the tech you choose nowadays really drives my interest. If the tech is dated or it does network or it's not of interest to anyone, nobody is going to register either," she said. "We're not thinking like retail marketers. We're thinking like event planners. And we need to kind of work together. Event tech, event planners, and event marketing, they’ll need to work together seamlessly to put on a wonderful event."

Overall, Shaq's advice for event agencies is to make registration easy and promote it on social media. "I feel like if you can make it easy to click buy and get those details later, that is going to be where you're going to capitalise on revenue attainment."