Startup using Uber-inspired surge pricing for event tickets raises funding

Hapz co-founders Lai Xin Chu (L) and Kendrick Wong (R). Photo credit: Hapz.

Singapore-based events and ticketing platform Hapz has raised just over US$500,000 in seed funding, it announced today. Cocoon Capital, Quest Ventures, TinkBig Venture, and Singapore Press Holdings’ SPH Media Fund participated in the round, alongside an unnamed angel investor.

Hapz aggregates information on a host of arts and entertainment events in the Lion City – including concerts, festivals, sports matches, and tourist attractions – and curates these according to its users’ preferences.

The company says that event goers can potentially make significant savings on tickets and admission fees using its service, as compared to buying them from outlets where prices are set. Its platform allows users to put in a bid at the price that they’d be willing to pay.

We realized that organizing an event is like setting up a new business every six months.

It’s similar to the surge pricing model used by ride-hailing companies like Uber. Hapz works with event organizers to establish a dynamic price range based on multiple factors including buyer demand, available inventory, time until the event, and competitor pricing, among others. This price range changes over time in accordance with these factors, giving event organizers a chance to make their expected return on sales.

The service calculates if a prospective buyer’s bid falls within the current pricing range. If it does, the transaction is completed. If not, users are given the opportunity to purchase at the closest available price to their bid.

Co-founder and CTO Lai Xin Chu tells Tech in Asia that Hapz takes a cut from tickets sold through its platform.

Hapz has had 8,500 users sign up since it launched in May this year, and claims to have facilitated ticket sales of more than US$365,000 so far. Co-founder and CEO Kendrick Wong tells Tech in Asia that the idea for the platform came from his time working in the events industry, when he encountered first hand some of the key challenges facing organizers in reaching out to the right customers. “We realized that organizing an event is like setting up a new business every six months,” he says.

On the flipside, Wong found that would-be event goers would often struggle to find information about events going on in the city that would be of interest to them. “Many a time, they’d miss out on good events because they didn’t see the advertisement on time, or the tickets were too highly priced,” he says. Hapz was developed with the intention of bridging this gap between events and the people that would be most interested in attending them.

Bridging the gap

Online ticketing platforms, ticket exchanges, and events listings sites like Songkick and Ticketbox are among Hapz’s key competitors. There are also a few startups elsewhere in the region hoping to disrupt this space, such as Thailand’s Event Pop and Indonesia’s Loket.

However, Wong thinks that Hapz is differentiated by its business model, which seeks to align its platform with the interests of both event goers and event organisers, and not one group over the other. He says that Hapz relies on its own marketing efforts and channels to pull customers to its platform, while the onus on achieving this remains with event organisers with most other platforms.