Loket’s untold story: How it got acquired by Gojek to transform online ticketing

This article is part of a series by East Ventures revealing the behind-the-scenes stories of how it invested in Southeast Asia’s leading startups. (Disclosure: East Ventures is a Tech in Asia investor.)

Loket founder Edy Sulistyo / Photo credit: Loket

One-stop ticketing management platform Loket, which means counter in Bahasa Indonesia, was founded in 2013 to support organizers through the breadth of event management – from ticketing and payment to crowd management and data analytics.

Its proposition to Indonesian businesses includes selling tickets, adding revenue streams for events, and providing complete event management solutions. The wide application of these offerings have successfully helped organizers pull off exhibitions, conferences, expos, concerts, and sporting events, among other things.

Loket’s mission to equally provide technology for event organizers and creators of all levels was well on its way, as the startup managed more than 5,000 events and collaborated with more than 4,000 organizers in 2018 alone.

The guy behind the counter

The Jakarta-based startup is the brainchild of Edy Sulistyo, a computer engineering graduate from Ohio State University. He worked in the financial services and electronic manufacturing sectors prior to founding Loket. A serial entrepreneur, he established a startup in the US before he decided to make Loket a full-blown event management system in 2013.

That same year, Indonesian consumers were beginning to shift to ecommerce, thanks to the greater convenience that came with taking events online.

According to Sulistyo, he didn’t envision Loket as an online ticketing service. “In fact, selling tickets online had never been a pain point for Indonesian promoters. For them, it was only a nice-to-have feature,” he explains. “Their real pain point is how to sell out their events, by any means necessary.”

That is why since the beginning, Loket engineered an end-to-end solution to help event organizers sell out events. It wanted to become the largest ticket distribution network in the country.

“To get to that, we had to get rid of our ego of wanting everyone to know about Loket. People usually only recognize business-to-consumer platforms and are not aware of business-to-business platforms like Loket,” says Sulistyo.

Edy Sulistyo (left) and Willson Cuaca / Photo credit: East Ventures

In 2016, he pitched his startup to East Ventures managing partner Willson Cuaca. There was an earlier pitch by a shareholder, but the discussion was moving too slow. At the time, East Ventures decided to discard the deal due to various red flags.

On the second time, however, Sulistyo clarified the previous situation and the dynamics between his shareholders and other venture capitalists.

Acquired by Gojek

Loket’s contribution to Indonesia’s economy

The flywheel effect