Behind the Final Whistle: How We Got 10,000 People to Show Up for Asia’s Largest Virtual HR Summit 

On July 19th, Spain lifted the football World Cup. 

While the cameras captured the celebrations, coach Luis de la Fuente pointed to the real reason: “It was together we reached this stage”. 

“I see a happy dressing room and a nation behind us. Together we reached this stage.” – Luis de la Fuente, Head Coach, Spain National Football Team 

A version of that story unfolded this month at Keka’s headquarters in Hyderabad. 

Keka HR Katalyst  Summer and Middle East became a resounding success, and it happened only because a team came together on one stage.  

Here’s how we did it. 

The scoreboard 

Before the story of how we got here, here’s what the scoreboard looked like when the final whistle blew. 

A different game plan 

Katalyst had run every year since 2023, but 2026 broke the template. We placed two big bets. We took Katalyst into the Middle East for the first time and we hosted it during one of the busiest periods on the HR calendar. To top it off, nearly a third of the team was experiencing Katalyst for the first time.  

Inside the dressing room 

Building the speaker lineup 

The speaker lineup was the single most important piece of the puzzle. Dr. Nishat Afzal led the outreach end to end, backed by Gauri from email marketing and DJ and Nitansha from content.  

Vishal Chopra and Gaurav Tandon stepped in on the toughest conversations. Tapan Acharya, our CRO, picked up the phone when a name needed extra weight. Together, this team brought 45+ speakers on board across India and the Middle East. 

Filling the stadium: the race to 30,000 registrations 

While the speakers were being lined up, the other half of the challenge was filling the virtual seats. This is where the team truly came together: 

• Abhay Pratap under Etee Dubey’s mentorship crafted the copy that powered the campaign. 

• Bidisha Nath from the design team created the eye-popping creatives behind it. 

• Sai from performance marketing made sure it reached the right audience. 

• Gauri kept prospects engaged at every stage through email campaigns. 

The combined push paid off, with registrations flowing in from every channel: 

• Referrals: ~10,000 

• Partners: ~9,300 

• Customer marketing: ~2,300 

• Email and WhatsApp: ~1,150 

• Social: ~800 

These channels alone brought in over 23,000 registrations. The rest came in through organic traffic, direct sign-ups, and other channels working quietly in the background. 

The results blew past the initial targets achieving a total of 30,000+ registrations: 

• 25,000+ registrations for India. 

• 5,000+ registrations for the Middle East. 

Winning the social media game: 7.5 million eyes on the stands 

Sunidhi and Pavleen kept the buzz alive across various channels with their behind-the-scenes reels, informative posts and constant community engagement efforts. Their efforts generated: 

• Over 600,000 impressions on LinkedIn. 

• More than 7.5 million views on Instagram. 

• LinkedIn Live sessions that peaked at 1,386 viewers, averaging 488 viewers. 

The coach who built the playbook: 9,000 referrals, two AI tools 

Vishal, SVP of Marketing, led from the trenches, jumping into speaker management, moderation, and anything else that needed an extra hand. Along with Gaurav Tandon, he came up with the idea for a digital attendee badge, which went on to become the best UGC campaign for Katalyst. With Dinesh, who heads web development, he built it and two other tools that moved the needle: 

Build Your Badge app: drove over 1,000 user-generated posts. 

Referral leaderboard: pulled in more than 9,000 organic referrals. 

Certificate generator: drove over 2,000 certificate downloads. 

The broadcast crew  

Sarath led the broadcast operation, with Prem, Hamid, Tejesh, and Adi handling shooting, studio setup, live editing, and same-day publishing. The team doubled its output, experimenting with new formats like hero videos with leadership and on-the-fly vox pops, and pushed content live to LinkedIn while sessions were still running. 

The MVPs on match day  

While other teams set up the play, the events team played striker, delivering the final goal. In under a month, Sudeshna, Yuvan, and Ruthwick learned Airmeet from scratch and became experts on the platform, handling backstage coordination and live troubleshooting to keep every session running seamlessly. 

The full leadership lineup 

A special thanks also goes to Tapan Acharya, Manish Mittal, Sri Harsha, Abhijit Rao, Suvojit Mukherjee, and Varun Ramakrishnan, Ahmed Z.D who stepped away from their day-to-day responsibilities to host sessions and keep the event moving seamlessly. 

The final whistle 

Those long nights eventually found their way onto the scoreboard. Like de la Fuente said of his own squad, this wasn’t the work of one campaign, one presentation, or one person. It came together because every single person on this team, whatever their role, gave it everything they had. Countless small decisions, hundreds of conversations, and people stepping outside their job descriptions whenever the situation demanded it. The audience saw a polished event. We got to witness everything that made it possible, together.