Industry News

Quicket gains investment for African expansion

Ticketing services start-up Quicket has attracted investment from KNF Ventures, a South African venture capital firm.

The Cape Town-based ticketing platform, which allows anyone to instantly start selling tickets to their own event, said it will use the funding to push expansion in key African markets.

Quicket is a cloud-based ticketing solutions platform that can cater to large-scale events and festivals, but also maintains a user-friendly interface to allow smaller event organisers to benefit from its self-management feature.

The investment will help the start-up to streamline its service offering in the local market, while also focusing on key markets in the wider range of the African network.

KNF Ventures was launched in February 2016 and is a SARS-approved section fund with ZAR100m (€5.9m/£5.1m/$6.4m) to invest in innovation-driven ventures with proven traction.

“As more companies, festivals, adventure sports, schools and individuals opt to plan and manage their own local events and meetings, the need for event-related technologies will continue to grow,” said James Hedley, director of Quicket, according to the Disrupt Africa website.

“Our cloud-based technology platform allows us to provide a seamless user experience – whether it is for larger events where event management support may be required or for smaller self-managed events.”

Quicket launched its African expansion in 2016 by partnering with a local ticketing company in Uganda and organising events in Kenya.

Much of the KNF investment will be allocated to refining the platform and developing a scalable mobile ticket kiosk to establish a physical distribution network in Africa.

“Quicket does not necessarily require funding as it currently almost doubles in revenue year-on-year off a decent base while being cash-flow positive,” said Keet van Zyl, investment partner at KNF Ventures.

“We admire the team’s bootstrap tenacity and strong positive company culture. Through Grindstone we’ve implemented a few strategic interventions together and realised that there is a good cultural fit and a considerable gap in the African ticketing space if we accelerate the growth of Quicket together.”