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Remember the good old times (well, not really) when you had to physically go to a cinema to buy tickets days before the screening to make sure you could watch the show of your choice?
What if you could just find a suitable seat and book it without having to move a muscle? That’s what EasyTickets.pk is offering.
How?
The company has partnered with major cinemas - and bus services - across the country, and updates their inventory position in real time. So if you want, let’s say, the third seat in the fourth row and none other, you can check its availability online and go ahead with the purchase.
With an extensive list of payment options, Easytickets does all its transactions online. “We have partnered with all major payment channels and banks: SimSim, Keenu, HBL, UBL etc,” Muhammad Imran, the Product Development Head at EasyTickets, says.
Not only have they integrated these channels onto their own website/app, it’s also available on the respective payment gateways.
But what does that mean exactly? Well, you don’t even have to go to Easytickets. Instead, they will come to you on your banking app, digital wallet etc.
The startup was founded in September 2015 by Monis Rahman, CEO of Rozee.pk (Pakistan’s biggest job portal), and is being funded by him to this day.
As for their source of revenue, it’s basically commission-based, with a cut charged to both vendors and consumers. So far, they have also shied away from using advertisements to make money.
As of now, the startup is offering three categories - movie, bus and event tickets - but it’s not going to remain that way. “The idea is to make our portal a complete mall for all ticketing/reservations needs,” Marketing Head Ammara Akram says. “We started out from just movies and expanded into other areas. Now we are working to bring in flight bookings, which will be live in a month or so,” she adds.
Moreover, Easytickets is also working on HotelPro, a similar real time reservation portal for hotels which Imran says would take around a year to develop.
Currently cash-positive, Imran claims that as much as Rs10 million a month are transacted through the startup, with each area accounting for more or less the same share on average in annual revenues.
Looking at the supply network of the company - whether bus services or cinemas - you can find most big names, but largely it’s just big names.
It does raise the question whether EasyTickets, like many other local startups, wishes to simply cash in on the urban elite and restrict itself to that particular niche.
“Actually from our end, everyone is welcome; from a small cinema to that travel company at Lari Adda. But there are certain prerequisites to come on board: they must be using internet and have some degree of automation so it comes down to their own willingness and mandate. Unfortunately, most of these smaller players don’t have the infrastructure to go online,” Imran clarifies.
As for the industry landscape, currently there are a few players trying to make their mark. Bookme.pk, which offers largely the same services, has recently upgraded their technology infrastructure and is perhaps the biggest direct competitor.
Other than that, there are some logistics companies who send a rider to manually buy a ticket, deliver it on your doorstep and collect cash.
But both, Imran and Ammara, don’t feel much threatened. “Bookme has a strong backing, with aggressive marketing but that has taken away focus from the product itself. We, on the other hand, are all about the product,” says Ammara.
“The cash on delivery model for ticketing can’t really work for long since there’s no real time update of the inventory. There are just too many lags with middlemen, making it an unsustainable model,” Imran believes.
So far, EasyTickets has kept a relatively low profile in terms of marketing. “Up until now, we have focused on a very streamlined marketing campaign, using intelligence from Rozee.pk - our sister organisation,” Ammara says.
“We haven’t gone all out for product awareness as yet,” Imran continues. But now that they have brought in more banks, in particular HBL, the market outreach has grown multifold.
“HBL alone has around 1.2m users, and add to that our different partners who now have our solution live on their apps, making us visible to approximately 2.5m people in total,” he claims.
Like most tech startups, EasyTickets too has access to a lot of data, regarding the consumption patterns of users. But Imran is very clear about it. “All data usage is internal at the moment. But once our consumer sample is mature enough, we will consider offering our in-house business intelligence services.”
So the next time you want to watch that premiere, maybe you can avoid going to the cinema well in advance to book your spot.
The writer is member of staff:
m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com
Twitter: @MutaherKhan
Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2018
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