KAMPALA —When Doreen Nanfuka started an events management, company called Fuuka Star a few years ago, her most immediate challenge was about the cost of ticketing. This is on top of the hustle of printing tickets and incorporating security features to avoid fraudsters.
Then she soon learned about Ticteq, an online events solution that among other things sells online tickets for events. Since then, she decided to incorporate digital tickets into her events.
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“Trust me Ticteq has helped us in saving money because we don’t have to use paper to print. It is also automated. We use their dashboards to withdraw our money through mobile money or send directly to our bank accounts,” she says.
With Ticteq, they just need a scanner that validates a QR code of tickets at event entrances.
“I encourage all event managers to sign up for Ticteq as signing up is free. There are no contracts needed yet they provide us with all information we need, and access to their tools to help us manage our businesses,” she says.
What is Ticteq?
Ticteq is a system that helps fans purchase tickets online starting from Sports, Theatre shows, Music concerts, Cinemas, Comedy shows, Festivals, and Award ceremonies, among others.
According to George Katuramu, a Ticteq director, Ticteq is a subsidiary of Xopa Limited that allows Events Organizers worldwide to register an account and start transacting with a personalized dashboard to enable them to monitor their event performance.
“They then start creating the events and attach them to the tickets they want. When they create these tickets, the links are generated automatically and they start sharing them with their users,” he says.
Katuramu says that for the time they have been operating, Ticteq has managed to sell more than 200,000 tickets with a transaction value worth more than Shs 400m.
Besides ticketing, Katuramu notes that they also offer crowd-funding services for noble causes such as education services, healthcare services, etc.
“Crowd-funding uses the power of social media and the internet to enable people to raise money, assist others in overcoming adversity, and achieve aspirational goals. You can do anything from funding your own surgery to helping a student realize his or her dream of attending college – and so much more,” he says.
Ignorance.
Katuramu however notes that the first challenge that the FinTech industry is facing is ignorance.
“Many people don’t know the digital world. People think that things that are done digitally are associated with fraud,” he says.
Even Nanfuka agrees.
“The challenge with Ticteq is that people don’t know that these platforms exist. Even when you buy tickets online for some people, they prefer to use the old way of printed tickets which is costly,” she says.
Another challenge is the high percentage cut by payment gateways.
“The percentage is a little bit high because we get a percentage for each ticket we sell to the customers. So, the gateways can charge you like a 3 percent per ticket sale yet you also need to take a percentage like 2 or 3 percent. This becomes a little bit high and people end up finding it costly to buy tickets online. If the gateways could reduce the percentage of the charges, I believe more people will start buying online tickets,” he says.
Ticteq is the 35th participant in 40 Days 40 FinTechs season 4 organized by HiPipo in partnership with Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies with generous support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Katuramu says the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has solved the issue of exposure and ignorance.
“This is something that has been missing in the FinTech industry, especially in marketing. For example, if someone has a good product, the initiative gets known to the public. This has been a hustle for us but when we come for the 40 days 40 FinTech, the public knows how our products work,” he says.
Now in its fourth season, HiPipo’s 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has become a household name in the financial technology space of the East African region. In the last three editions, more than 100 FinTechs have been showcased, highlighting stories changing people’s lives, especially in the under-served sectors.
