Events ticketing startup, Tix Africa closes six-figure pre-seed round to scale its products

Nigerian self-service ticketing startup, Tix Africa has closed a pre-seed funding round touted by the company to be a six-figure sum. The funding round was led by HoaQ, with participation from a number of private equity investors.

This latest influx of funds will enable Tix Africa to develop its technology so as to scale its events apps. The startup also plans to finally commence its expansion drive roughly a year after announcing. This fund would also be deployed into expanding its operations into Ghana, Egypt, Kenya and other East African countries in the coming months.

Event organisation is becoming increasingly more demanding especially with most people hardly having enough time to invest in it. According to experts, some common problems of event organisation includes lack of proper prioritization of activities, too many guests to handle, no event management process, too little time for setup and breakdown and a painful lack of experience.

See also: Startup Review: Festival Coins Takes Care of the Technical Aspects of Event Planning

The founders, Folayemi Agusto and Nosa Oregun, having successfully run the Eat Drink Lagos Food Festival since 2015, launched Tix Africa in 2019 to solve the challenges of ticketing live events in Lagos. Their resolve came as a result of encountering challenges of accurately collating guest details, payments and ticketing the events.

The founders built Tix to plug the gap in user data readily available to event organizers under the company’s original name of Festival Coins. The platform currently makes it easy for organizers to create and monetize live or virtual events, enabling the creation of a customizable event page, secure payment collection via Paystack, and giving guests a seamless way to book and attend live events.

We’re really excited to expand our platform to other markets across the continent, potentially enabling users to attend events they may otherwise not have known about.” 

Tix Africa CEO, Folayemi Agusto

Tix Africa CEO, Folayemi Agusto, said the startup always wants to give users a wonderful experience from the moment tickets are booked to the eventual event.

“No one does private gatherings or public events and festivals like Nigerians. We want to continue providing the best tech-enabled solution for event organisers and attendees so that each event is a seamless, accessible experience from the moment tickets are booked, right through to arriving and gaining entry to the actual event,” she said.

The CEO said the new capital raised will be deployed into doing just that by expanding Tix Africa’s development team, revamping its organizer mobile app, developing additional products, and launching Tix Pro –  a paid version of Tix offered on a recurring subscription basis.

The company also plans to scale its operations to Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, and Egypt in the second half of 2021. 

 Tix Africa has also been working on offering virtual events integrated with Zoom as well as on developing Tix Africa’s own native virtual meeting space for its users. As part of its new development, Tix will also enable users to store balances in a digital wallet and transfer this balance between events for payments on the company’s radio-frequency identification (RFID) wristbands.

The company says its revenue grew 90% year-on-year in H1 2021

Speaking about the funding, Managing Partner at HoaQ, Joe Kinvi, said the company is delighted to back the founders and their innovative team which deeply understand the market and have built Tix.Africa to cater for it.

“We are confident that their vision to adapt their offering and expand their tech team and product offerings will fuel their continued growth and development in the coming years,” he said.