[How TechCircle Startups Stay Nimble During COVID-19 Times] – Hitch Planner
Name: Brenda Shee, Co-founder, 30yo, Singaporean
Technopreneur Circle member: Since June 2019
Company: Hitch Tech Pte Ltd (SaaS [Software as a Service])
Website: https://hitchplanner.com/
The company under 20 words:
Revolutionising the wedding planning experience.
How has COVID-19 impacted the company / business?
The wedding industry was one of the worse hit industry in the COVID-19 crisis. All weddings in Singapore had to be cancelled or postponed until further notice. We’ve heard from our vendor partners that they are seeing 70{6f3b5ca5ace692369bf4704a1330bfd533e2599dde4b418ebc2aa913bbe9723c} cancellations for 2020 bookings.
A lot of meetings with partner vendors had to go digital and we are relying on technology more than ever to reach out to our end-users and partner vendors.
What are some of the adjustments you had to make in order to minimize disruptions?
HitchPlanner is a wedding planning and wedding services marketplace. We launched phase 1 of the platform in Aug 19, and will be launching our marketplace in June 2020.
We took advantage of this lull period (when everyone is at home and free to respond to our calls and emails) to connect with new vendors who are looking to go digital. Our marketplace tools will help wedding SMEs scale and grow their business, plus become a new digital touchpoint for them. We also had time to sit down to think of ways that we, as a platform, can help our partners increase their engagement with pre-wedding customers!
Name one technology / platform which you find useful in these times and why?
For work – it will be Trello. In a quick glance, we can see how the team is performing, what tasks are pending and needs to be attended too urgently. It’s a lifesaver, and every team should have it!
For lifestyle – I recommend the downdog app! They have 7-minute bitesize HIIT workouts that will fit into any busy entrepreneur life. Being physically healthy in this day is so important!
Are you currently working from home? If so, how has it been in terms of efficiency?
Yes – I’m more efficient! I love working from home! This means that I don’t have to dress up, spend time travelling to the office, or find a seat at lunch! I do miss having human interaction though.
Any shout-outs / rants you would like to add on
Shoutout to my amazing Co-Founder, Lorraine Tan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorraine-t/)! And our mentors at Startup O
** This article first appeared on TechCircle’s Medium page **