DIY ticketing portal bets on TN to rake in the big bucks

It anticipates these markets to shine in the marathon and fitness-centric event ticketing space. Co-founders of Townscript, Sachin Sharma and Sanchit Malik get talking on their plans. 

Today, we are the largest DoIt-Yourself (DIY), community driven registration and ticketing platform for events in India. We allow all event organisers, irrespective of the scale of events, to create and manage their event ticketing seamlessly, without any intervention from the platform.

BookMyShow's backing has enabled us to scale and has given us the edge in this category. We have a strong foothold in segments like Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE), marathons, college festivals, meetups, workshop and trainings, treks, trips and seminars.  

We have grown in terms of the number of events by more than 200% since the BookMyShow investment in 2017. We hosted over 15,000 events in FY 17-18; out of these more than half were paid events. We have seen a 110% increase in the number of paid events between FY 16-17 to FY 17-18. We are registering more than 120% growth in sales year on year. We have also extended our presence in the Indonesian market this year (2018) and are already seeing am encouraging response.  We are also looking to expand our international presence in countries like Singapore and UAE. 

As a technology product, we are already present in Tamil Nadu. In Chennai, we have started witnessing a lot of traction for conferences, running events and other business events. We also anticipate this market to really excel in the marathon and related fitness segments as well.  In addition to Chennai, we have started building a loyal customer base in Coimbatore. The market is evolving and the demand for events is increasing by the day in this market. Since metro cities are home to the largest number of events, majority of sales and growth comes from the big cities including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bengaluru. 

We also foster event ticketing culture in smaller towns and cities. The Devil’s Circuit, the biggest obstacle race in India, Ruby Conference India (Kochi), Trivandrum Marathon, Sarang at IIT Madras are some of the events we hosted. We have also worked with The Pune Comedy Festival, Comic Con India, Oktoberfest, Satara Hill Half Marathon. As we cater to both events organisers and individuals, the potential is certainly there to scale in Tier 2 markets and this is what we aim to do as well to achieve the next phase of growth. We have done interesting events in Kochi, Jaipur and Chandigarh as well.  

Value addition from teams 

Townscript and BookMyShow are totally different products and they cater to different market needs and segments.  But there are also events like Comic Con at which both BookMyShow and Townscript were used. It’s their wealth of experience and deep understanding of this space and market and product expertise which has enabled us to scale in the right manner. We of course, whenever needed, collaborate to give a better experience to our customers.  BookMyShow has been a leader in the entertainment ticketing segment for the past decade. They solved more pertinent problems like pricing arbitrage and democratisation of information in the segment.