Nigerian startup ogaVenue has launched its online booking portal for venues, aiming to streamline the task of securing an event location into an easy 10 minute online process.
According to ogaVenue co-founder Andrew Airelobhegbe, until now, booking a venue for a larger event – such as a wedding, or conference – in Nigeria involved weeks’ worth of “hassle”.
Airelobhegbe said the startup decided to apply to the concept of hotel room bookings to event venues, and create a simple online platform to circumvent the difficulties in finding and booking a venue.
“In simple terms, ogaVenue is important because we reduce a process that could take days or weeks, and turn it into a simple 10 minute process, making it easy for anyone who wants to host an event to easily search, check availability and book a venue online,” said Airelobhegbe.
“This is 2015, at ogaVenue we believe since you can book for an hotel online with ease you should also be able to book a venue for your event at ease,” he said.
The ogaVenue.com.ng platform currently lists over 1000 venues in Lagos and Edo state; with the startup planning to scale quickly to other areas of Nigeria. Airelobhegbe says the platform will cover all states in Nigeria by the end of 2015, with further plans to launch in Southern Africa.
ogaVenue’s platform went live at the start of February, and saw its first booking take place two days after its soft launch. The co-founders are pleased with the number of searches and bookings going through the site; and are working on quickly adding as many new venues to the platform as possible.
