Event-organising and management has for long been thought to be an area for those more experienced in public relations.
But the uptake of technology in the country in the recent past has opened the sector to less experienced entrepreneurs seeking to make a name, leading to an emergence of diverse platforms like KenyaBuzz, Ticketsasa, Eventbrite and Nairobinow.
Even with these, Eric Waithaka, one of the co-founders of Gigwapi, says there is still a gap in the market.
“While still on campus we found ourselves looking for a place where we could get drinks at affordable prices and we realised that there was no online platform where people can go to check out what’s happening, where and at what cost,” he said.
Together with three other fourth year students, they started a Facebook and Twitter page that would aggregate all this information, making them popular among other students at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
It was after they completed their studies that they started pursuing the idea more seriously but because of other personal commitments two of the members left the group leaving Eric and Kinyanjui Njonde.
It was the duo’s commitment to creating a start-up from their idea that resulted in Gigwapi— an online event listing and promotion platform.
“Gigwapi is a name that we coined from the English word gig which relates to events and the Kiswahili word wapi meaning “where” loosely translating to “where are the gigs?,” Mr Waithaka said.
According to Mr Njonde, the start-up helps event organisers to list and market their functions as well as in selling tickets for the events.
“Unlike other similar online platforms, we do small events such as theme nights in addition to large functions which set us apart from competitors and those who visit our website can easily get tickets,” he said.
Events listed on the platform are aggregated based on social interest and the duo uses social media and data mining to get information about them, enabling a user to discover what is happening around them.
Events are categorised and organised by date and price. From the website’s homepage it is easy to identify events happening on the particular day and those happening within the week.
Users can also navigate the nightlife, movies, arts, tech, sports and family events categories or specifically search for details of a particular occasion.
“We officially launched our first product in the market on February 2013 and we just passed our one year mark last month. In that period, we have had 1,500 events listed on the website, 47,000 users and 100 event organisers on the platform,” Mr Waithaka says.
In order to realise commercial viability, the start-up decided to go into ticketing for the functions that they have listed, coming up with SMS ticketing. When one clicks on a particular event coming up, he can get more details about its location and costing.
If the event has an entrance fee, he can click on the Get Ticket tab and follow instructions on how to buy the ticket via M-Pesa with the confirmation SMS acting as the ticket.
“All one has to do is to show up at the gate and show the M-ticket, but if he loses his mobile phone, he can still get access to the event because the organiser retains a copy of those who paid via M-Pesa and the guests just have to show up with their national identification cards,” Mr Njonde said.
Recently, the start-up introduced the Gigwapi card, cementing its efforts to make event ticketing seamless through the introduction of cashless payments.
Apart from being able to attend events using the card, cardholders are also at liberty to connect to their social media platforms, enabling them to update their profiles.
The start-up partnered with Terrasoftworks Software to come up with the Sh200 card that uses Near Field communication (NFC) technology making events more interactive and fun by providing easier ways for attendees to share their physical engagements.
“It also holds your personal information and the connection to your social media profile provides a cool way to share your current physical engagements like check in, upload photos and messages to your followers on social media by just tapping on designated scan points at the event making it a source of publicity for events driven wholly by the attendees,” said Mr Njonde.
The success with which the card will be received by both users and event marketers will drive the use of the NFC card, with the two co-founders hoping to create a similar version in the form of a wristband.
Apart from charging event organisers a commission on ticket sales, the start-up also makes money from the customer driven brand visibility since the integration of social media by card users acts as personal endorsements, opening up a larger market for more publicity.
Revenue
But the duo has had challenges funding and fitting in the market by constantly changing their platform and business model to meet the g needs of their customers.
“Online businesses take some time before they start generating revenue. This means that you must have cash to cover the runway before taking off. Being incubated at Nailab (a technology promotion centre) helped us to raise some seed money to stay afloat,” Mr Njonde added.
Gigwapi is seeking to expand its market share in the events industry by listing more functions in other major cities of the country. It also plans to launch an android app for users by mid this year.
Their advice to youths seeking to create a start-up is simple: They must have the right strategy and calculated partnerships that will enable them to grow steadily in the market.
original syoory appeared on :business daily kenya
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