College fest registration
that scales from 500 to 15,000 participants.
Multi-college signup, competition entries, hostel vs day-scholar split, faculty dashboards, sponsor deck delivery. Built by people who've helped IIT and NIT fest teams ship registration in October, again in January.
Five things Eventbrite doesn't get about Indian fests.
- Multi-college participation. A Mood Indigo or Antaragni draws students from 200+ colleges. You need per-college registration links, coordinator visibility, and cross-college team support.
- Competition-heavy schedule. A typical fest has 30-80 events across cultural, tech, lit categories. Each with its own rules, team size, entry fee, deadline. Generic ticketing collapses at that complexity.
- Faculty coordinator layer. Head coordinators (student) plus faculty advisers (staff) plus organising committee (multiple students). Different access levels, different data views.
- Hostel vs day-scholar split. Hostellers need accommodation coordination; day-scholars don't. This changes the registration flow.
- Cash + UPI + card mix. Sponsor payments by cheque or NEFT, participant payments by UPI, on-spot registrations in cash. All need to reconcile.
Fest-specific modules that ship in a week.
Tech, cultural, lit, sports - each has its own workflow.
Cultural fests (Mood Indigo, Antaragni, Malhar). Dance, music, drama, fashion. Multi-round: prelims online, semis and finals on campus. We support round-based advancement - only shortlisted teams get the next round's schedule.
Tech fests (Techfest IIT Bombay, Kshitij, Tryst). Hackathons, robotics, coding contests, workshops. Long-form events (36-hour hackathon) need mid-event check-ins and food coupon tracking.
Lit fests (Rendezvous IIT Delhi lit events, Mrityumjay). Debate, JAM, extempore, quizzing. Smaller audiences, judging-heavy. Judge portal separate from participant portal.
Sports meets (inter-college tournaments). Cricket, football, chess, athletics. Bracket generation, match scheduling, live leaderboards during finals.
Departmental fests (Rangoli at IIT-M, mechanical fest). Smaller (500-2,000 participants). Free tier works. Setup in one evening.
What running through SignupDesk actually looks like.
| Fest size | Colleges | Events | Peak signups/hour | Setup time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Departmental (600) | 1 | 8-12 | 180 | 2 hours |
| College annual (3,000) | 1-5 | 25-40 | 640 | 6 hours |
| Premier fest (8,000) | 50-100 | 60-80 | 1,400 | 2 days |
| IIT/NIT flagship (15,000+) | 200+ | 80-120 | 3,200 | 1 week |
Offline check-in that actually works.
Anyone who's run a fest on IIT/NIT WiFi during peak knows the routine. Registration desk downloads the guest list at 8 AM. WiFi collapses by 11 AM. Volunteers with QR scanners on their phones need to keep checking people in.
Our approach:
- Scanner app caches the full guest list on the phone at start-of-shift.
- Check-ins are recorded locally, queued for sync.
- When any bar of network returns (2G is enough), sync flushes queued check-ins in seconds.
- Cross-scanner deduplication: if two volunteers scan the same badge simultaneously, only one gets marked. No double-entries.
We tested this at a 12,000-participant fest at IIT Guwahati in March 2026. Zero missed check-ins across 8 hours despite the venue WiFi failing four times.
Because fest budgets are tight.
- Free tier - unlimited events under ₹100 entry fee. Great for departmental fests, workshops.
- Student Fest plan - ₹8 per paid registration, no monthly fee, no setup cost. Add faculty dashboard, coordinator roles, on-spot cash entry.
- Fest Pro - ₹15,000 flat for the full fest window (6 weeks). Includes accommodation module, sponsor deck auto-gen, dedicated support during fest week.
- Enterprise - custom for flagship fests with 10k+ participants. Dedicated infra, on-site support engineer, custom feature build.
Payment gateway fees pass through at cost (~1-2% for UPI/cards). We don't mark up gateway fees.