How Was Our Experience at Alegria?
Though I didn’t get selected for the solo singing competition, I accelerated GenZDealZ.ai’s collaboration with Pillai’s management for more opportunities around incubation, sponsorships, judges requirement & online promotion activities.
Javed sir & Mohsin sir came to judge the duet singing – we got 1 day stall at the foodcourt with a good GenZ crowd in & around the campus. Specifically we were targeting faculties & management staff (as they’ve a good network of students to cater to and spread our offerings).
Outcome of 1 day stall (from 10:50 to 17:10) at Alegria 2025:
- Gained 60+ downloads and distribution of 80+ mobile standee bookmark to principal, faculties & other college students too.
- Visibility to 200+ moving crowd around the festival
Missed Opportunity:
At night there was a comedy night and following that few performances – we could have asked to placed the standee at night for off campus audience engagement (obviously it’d require a volunteer to drive it). Atleast 2000+ crowd attends the comedy night..
Safest place for the standee:
Irrespective of whichever event you’re attending – carrying the standee all the times is a hectic.
- If you’re a student, keeping safe in your classroom backside is a good choice
- If you’re an event coordinator, ask a student whether they could safely keep the standee (until next event arrives)
Issues With Stall:
Problem 1: Falling on the front side
Solution: Keep a heavy weight on the standee’s back side to not let it fall or keep another standee’s weight on the bottom
Problem 2: QR not scannable
Solution: Always have a big QR stick on the top of the stall or on your bookmark for alternative scanning & get downloads
Problem 3: No refreshments
Solution: Here at Alegria there were no refreshments to stall owners. Ask the event team early and make them arrange atleast good qty. of water bottles.
Problem 4: Unfixed timing
Solution: In most events, stall timings starts on time, however the wrap up time is undecided. Ask them when it would end so plan your schedule & appoint volunteers accordingly.
If they wrap up early before the said timing, tell them to provide alternative place to setup the stall as they’ve already committed the timings
Why Do You Badly Need Volunteers At Your Stall?
- Increase in network: Volunteers (in college events these are students itself) who’re popular in the campus brings major footfall. Here students visits the stall just because the volunteer is present at the stall.
In our case, Vidit is highly dynamic and known in the campus and so I appointed him (rates are mutually decided) - Explanation of offerings: The engagement increases when you’ve someone who’s equally skilled at sales. Here you can divide the crowd and handle it by each volunteer
TIP: Pay these volunteers very well and provide good refreshments (they’re putting equal or may be double the efforts)
Which are the things you can’t miss (while having a stall in college fests)?
- Publicising on social media: Invite your in house social media person to cover the event and publish real time reels & content
- Taking feedback from students: Such fests are the best time to receive critical feedback on your app/product (you may provide rewards in return)
- Inviting top level management staff: When you’ve the campus director, Vice Principal visiting the stall, it gives you a good credibility for future partnerships & you start winning the college trust
- Having an exclusive offer: We had created GENWIN code for ₹100 OFF on any deal for a limited time. These offer should not just be visible but also need to be communicated with the visitors, else they won’t know
Which are the details to be taken care while setting up your stall in small events
- Be on time: Though the stall timings might be from 10 to 4 PM , there lll be the 20% crowd who gives 80% of the revenue in those 1 or 2 hour. If you miss that period you miss on majority of the core. However, you get a 2nd chance too – when you’re exposed to many faculties who has network of students who can leverage the stall details and spread the word for good.
- Test all the resources in advance : On the day of the event, never leave anything behind and don’t trust on anyone – not even your nearest team member. Everyone can make big blunder that’ll cost you at the end. In our case we made the mistake of leaving standees in the office and need to wait extra hours for opening.
- Testing & seen it lively: There many things like cables power, volunteers, table for stall keeping, etc. are the task you need to manage while setting up your stall
- Getting volunteer’s assistance helps you to sell more. Here we didn’t get much assistance as it was an intangible product so we had to duo the explanation part and sell it further.
- Warm up the crowd is needed. Just putting the standees won’t help. The initial interactions helps to attract the crowd and the same crowd further refers to their friends to visit.
- You get to know your business nature so we understood what all things were missing in our stall (QR codes, some exclusive offer banners, working laptop, etc.) – will keep in mind next time.
- Please search for a friend who can pull the crowd and you can explain further. IN my case it was Vidit who told that we were having an exciting offer and I starts explaining the platform. Vidit was highly outrovert and had good bond within teh colleges.
Inform all your participants & your classmates in advance about such events (so they could visit as their lectures ends)
Your own classmates helps to strengthen your confidences and helps for pulling good crowd
Gained 30+ downloads and the feedback:
‘Great experience but ui can still work on themself’
‘The app is really easy to use and it helped me a lot to save money, really love the app, everyone must use it.’
While ending the event, if there’re events running in your campus, you can put the standee in the college itself for attending the next expo
We though of further integration like payment gateway – however, we would be looking in the next expo to come up with a big way and get the maximum of this event.