Whenever large events are involved, social media becomes an important part of increasing sales. Find out about social media engagement & sales analytics on PouchNation. purchasing their tickets, event organisers dealing with counterfeit tickets or various types of fraud, and a lack of proper one-on-one attendee attention and event analytics.
Pouch addresses these key issues with a before, during and after-event product strategy. Its core product, Pouch Cue, is a cashless payment system targetting big events such as festivals, concerts, sports events, marathons and conferences. With Pouch Cue, the team hopes to provide better access control and a more meaningful experience to attendees and event organisers alike.
How it works
Before the event starts, attendees receive individual NFC wristbands and are able to load balance on the wristbands instead of spending time paying cash or credit continuously. Additionally, event organisers and merchants don’t need to deal with bulky terminals or an Internet connection in order to load balances. During the event, they only need NFC phones with the Pouch app installed in order to receive or give payments to attendees.
Pouch Cue also utilises social media engagement with its attendees. Attendees are given a special event link upon registration and have to type in their unique code found on their NFC wristbands. Afterwards, pictures taken during the event will be uploaded directly on their social media platforms.
After the event, Pouch also provides analytics to the event organisers, with metrics such as sales, event insights and demographics that can help organizers make smarter decisions about their future events.
Pouch claims that there are concrete financial benefits for event organisers which include: a 15-30 per cent sales increase due to the faster ticketing process, 10-15 per cent increase of total revenue due to a lack of fraud and revenue leakage, and more sponsor engagement due to additional advertising space on the NFC wristbands.
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What Pouch stands for
“We are looking at being a one-stop technology product for event organisers,” explains Ilya Kravtsov, CEO of Pouch. “The B2B is just the starting point to something much bigger [for Pouch], which will be an integrated B2C ticketing website for all events across Southeast Asia,” adds Kravtsov.
Pouch currently has two offices in Southeast Asia, namely Philippines and Indonesia, with Malaysia set to open later in the year.
However, Pouch’s influence is not only limited to Southeast Asia, but in other regions as well, including signing of a license agreement in the UK. It is also currently working on finalising two other agreements in the Middle East and US.
The team reports to have closed a US$500,000 investment round in May 2015 and is planning to go for a Series A round in Q1 or Q2 next year. With a strong regional focus for hosting events in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and the UK, Pouch credits its rapid growth to the team’s previous experience working in offline mobile transactions for almost two years.
“We really want to build a global company out of Southeast Asia. We had a lot to learn on how emerging markets work and how people react to innovative products. All this learning was very crucial for us to arrive [at] where we are today.” concludes Kravtsov.
