Event ticketing has come a long way since the olden days where everything is physical and if you were to lose your ticket, you’d lose your chance to get into the venue.
While there are still events that utilise physical tickets, Ticket2u is spearheading the change to a safer, faster and hassle-free solution in Malaysia and beyond.
Ticket2u was launched back in 2016 with only a small team of fewer than 10 people. According to YC Chia, the Founder of Ticket2u, the inspiration for Ticket2u stemmed from his experience with event listing from his previous company.
He was surfing around domains and found that Ticket2u.com.my was available and as they say, the rest is history.
A One-Stop Solution For Event Management
Ticket2u is all about making life easier for both the attendees and the organisers. It aims to be a one-stop solution for Event Management—starting from ticketing to registration to RSVP, to on-site scans, check-ins and much more.
It simply means the organisers will not have to scramble to get their hands on other solutions when Ticket2u handles everything they’ll need to manage an event smoothly.
As a user of the platform, you will not have to go through leaps and bounds to find events that are either near you or events that you are interested in.
If you have an event that you want to attend, you can just buy the tickets through the app or on their website.
On the Ticket2u portal, you can find a boatload of events ranging from marathons to seminars to theme parks.
For the event organisers, all it takes is a few minutes to create an event and start selling your tickets. Using Ticket2u will also save you the hassle of highlighting your event to the masses because Ticket2u already has a large user base.
At the end of the day, it is all about saving time for all the parties involved.
Preventing Ticketing Scams
However, another issue still prevails—ticket scalpers. They’re everywhere and they make events more expensive for those that want to go because they sweep up all the tickets and sell them for a higher price.
Ticket2u solves that problem by being the middle-man. They will verify the seller and the event before the sales go live and collect company details, documents and perform their own background check to make sure it is not a shady event.
On the day itself, attendees enter the event with QR Code tickets that are encrypted and difficult to duplicate.
As an attendee, you do not want to jump through numerous hoops to just buy tickets for an event. With Ticket2u, there is no need to sign up or download their app as you can simply buy your tickets on the website and pay using your credit/debit card, or e-wallet.
Since the launch of Ticket2u, they have created several technologies that speed up and improve their system. One of their more recent ones is the Facial Recognition Check-In feature which was launched in May of 2019.
The team is hard at work on developing a Business Matching App for Exhibitions, along with FaceCount 1.0, an AI technology used to calculate the number of attendees, their gender and more. He also said they will launch a new Bus Ticketing technology soon.
Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Chia recalled how in the early days of Ticket2u, the company was literally hanging on a thread.
All the company had left was 3 months of payroll in the bank. But fast forward to today, the company claims to make profits of more than RM100k a month (the profits are calculated from ticketing charges + check-in services.)
Ticket2u now serves more than 250 events a month and sells more than 1,000 tickets a day to boot. The company is also looking to expand to other countries. They’ve already reached out to Singapore and Indonesia and are looking to expand into Vietnam and Bangkok as well.
He then said that he started the company with only a coding background and no experience in the event industry. He also did not have the personnel nor the budget to kickstart Ticket2u. He had to go out and perform sales, join networking events and even call up event organisers to give the company a chance because no one knew what Ticket2u was.
The team is now 15-members strong and since its inception, everyone that was hired stayed on. This meant that Chia did not have to do any firing processes. Because they are a small team, running the business did not incur a lot of costs.
“I didn’t face any issues when it comes to firing because I am honest with their problems. They will then have the choice to either leave, blend in or perform better. Perhaps I’m quite choosy in hiring, that’s why it’s not easy to get people in,” said Chia.
We asked Chia for advice on how to manage and keep talents in his team. He said: “Treat them as your family. Spend time with them. Massage them. Grow with them and be transparent and fair to everyone.”
- You can find out more about all the events on Ticket2u on their site here.