Collins Namulen, a BCom student, Rodgers Mutisya, an Informatics student and Brian Otieno, a Telecommunications student all at Strathmore University in their final year came together May last year to start Kenya Ticket Shop.
The three were inspired by what they said poor event management and poor ticket sales in the country and felt it was time to for event goers in Kenya to buy event tickets from the comfort of theri homes. Their idea so them launch Kenya Ticket Shop.
Kenya Ticket Shop, an online ticketing platform, enables one to buy event tickets from their mobile phones via Mobile money; Mpesa, Airtel Money, YuCash, Master Card or Visa and also allows event organizers to create and manage their events directly from its plug and play platform.
TechMoran caught up with them and this is what they told us.
How does it work?
Kenya Ticket Shop works simply.
Event organizers have two options of listing their events with us:
They can simply forward their Event Details; Event name, Description of about 200-300 words, Photos (Ticket photo & Event photo), Venue, Date and Time of the event, and Price, to our email address and one of our team members will have it posted on our console at no cost.
They also have the option of creating their accounts on our website (www.kenyaticketshop.com) and simply upload the event themselves with our easy-to-use dashboard. From there they’ll be able to monitor their ticket sales in real time.
Users (Event goers) simply identify their event of choice, place an order, and make direct payment with the listed payment options and will have a copy of their unique ticket sent to their email. They can also print the ticket there and then or show up at the event venue with a softcopy of the ticket on their phone.
How many tickets sold so far?
We’ve managed to sell several events, including concerts, sporting events, festivals, fashion events, and charge a 5% commission fee for each ticket sold via the platform.
Who is your competition? How unique are you from it?
Ticketsasa is our main competition. They’ve served the market for so long and are the main players in the online ticketing industry. Our current strategy is to capture about 60% of the market by December 2014.
Our easy-to-use plug and play event organizer dashboard sets us apart from the rest.
How much did you use as capital to start the firm?
All we needed was to pay for the domain name, web hosting, and to register the business to start us off. Summing to KES 6,000 or thereabout.
Do you have any seed fund or investors?
No, we do not have any at the moment.
Where do you expect to be in the next two years?
We have plans to expand the platform to the whole of East Africa in the coming years. We’ve partnered with the RebelDev Group to look at the possibility of having an East African Ticket Shop. We’re also working on
a ticketing API that event organizers can simply integrate and sell tickets directly from their website.
What are the challenges you have come across of running your company?
Managing school work and company errands has always been a double-cross especially now that we’re in our final year of University.
What’s your advice to upcoming startup founders?
Start what you can finish. Hard work. You obviously need a good team. Need more? I know it’s a cliché but let’s see how far you’ll go without these.
