SPALBA: The "Digital Twin" Disruptor Reimagining the $100 Billion Indian Event Industry

Event planning is consistently ranked as the sixth most stressful job in the world, sitting just behind high-stakes professions like air traffic controllers and fire fighters. In India, a country famous for its "Big Fat Weddings" and high-octane corporate summits, the industry is a paradox: while the sound systems and LEDs are cutting-edge, the pre-event logistics—finding venues, visualizing setups, and price negotiations—have remained stuck in a 1995 time warp of manual site visits and unstructured spreadsheets.

Enter Vishal Puri, the founder of SPALBA. A former Director at PwC with over two decades of tech consulting experience, Vishal has combined his expertise with his co-founder Naveen Gupta (a veteran of Ferns N Petals) to build a "SaaS-enabled marketplace." By creating high-fidelity Digital Twins of physical event spaces, SPALBA is eliminating the need for physical site visits and bringing unprecedented transparency to a fragmented industry. From corporate ballroom setups to thousand-person wedding banquets, SPALBA is proving that the best way to plan the future is to replicate it digitally first.

The White Space: Why Event Tech Stagnated

Despite the massive growth of India's event ecosystem, tech intervention has historically been limited to the day of the event. "You get amazing sound systems and LEDs, but those are for the one-day show," Vishal notes. "The months of planning that happen before that were completely unstructured. Every project started from scratch, with no carried-forward learning."

Vishal and Naveen identified a massive "white space" in the venue life cycle. They realized that if they could solve the friction of discovery, exploration, and planning within a venue, they could address the core pain point of the entire industry. This led to the birth of SPALBA—a platform that allows planners to discover, explore, plan, book, and execute events end-to-end.

The Core Innovation: Digital Twins and Immersive Visualization

At the heart of SPALBA is the concept of the Digital Twin—a 100% accurate 3D replica of a physical space. Unlike a standard photograph or a 360-degree video, a digital twin allows users to "walk through" a property坐sitting in Delhi and exploring a venue in Mumbai or London.

"Visualization is the key," Vishal explains. "We don't just show you the ballroom; we give you a 'Design Stash' tool. With a click of a button, you can set up a 300-person banquet layout, see where the guest seating will be, and visualize the F&B area in seconds. This used to be a week-long manual process."

The Pivot: Turning a COVID Disaster into a "Star" Moment

SPALBA’s journey began in late 2019, just months before the pandemic brought the global travel and events industry to a screeching halt. For a startup in the hospitality space, COVID looked like an immediate death sentence. However, Vishal and his team turned it into a blessing in disguise.

"There was no market to go to, so we just put our heads down and worked on the product for two years," Vishal reflects. When the world finally reopened, the industry’s mindset had shifted. Luxury properties that previously insisted on physical visits now embraced digital as a survival tool. Because SPALBA had spent the downtime perfecting their "star" product, they were able to capture the market overnight when competitors were still struggling with "half-cooked" solutions.

The Machine Learning Edge: Pricing Rationalization

Beyond visualization, SPALBA is using data to solve the industry’s transparency problem. They have developed a Machine Learning algorithm that maps venue features—such as distance from the airport, ceiling height, and pre-function area size—to historic pricing data.

This allows event planners to input a property and receive an Optimum Benchmark Price. "This can change the way the industry works," says Vishal. "It moves the conversation from arbitrary negotiation to data-backed rationalization."

Lessons in Resilience: 3 Failures to a 4th Success

Vishal’s success with SPALBA is the result of what he calls "wisdom by hindsight." He had attempted three startups earlier and failed. He shares two critical lessons from those experiences:

1. Conviction over Comfort: "In previous attempts, I wasn't 100% convinced. When things got tough, I backed out. This time, I was all-in."
2. Plugging the Gaps: "Most entrepreneurs think they can do everything themselves. That never takes you far. You must identify your skill gaps and build a team to plug them from day one."

Conclusion: The Future is Immersive

As SPALBA enters Phase 2 of its journey, it is moving from a supply-side SaaS tool to a full-blown SaaS-enabled Marketplace. By opening up their visualization tools to the demand side (event planners), they are creating a natural ecosystem where transactions are the obvious outcome. In a world where luxury is defined by time and experience, Vishal Puri is ensuring that the "sixth most stressful job" becomes a little less chaotic—one digital twin at a time.