Event platform raises S$680,000 seed fund from Cocoon Capital, SPH Media

Their goal is to become the number one experience booking platform in Asia.

Event and online ticketing platform Hapz racked up S$680,000 in a seed round led by Cocoon Capital, SPH Media Fund, Quest Ventures, TinkBig Venture and an angel investor.

Launched in May 2017, Hapz is an online platform that collates information on a host of arts, entertainment and sporting events in Singapore. The platform’s proprietary dynamic pricing system allows customers to decide on a price they are willing to pay for an event that interests them. If the price falls within the acceptable range generated by the system, the consumer is immediately notified on the confirmation of the transaction. As users interact with different events on the platform, Hapz has the ability to understand the user preferences better and target them with relevant events and deals. They can also get alerts from Hapz on the top 100 events in Singapore that fit within their budget.

CEO and co-founder of Hapz Kendrick Wong believes that their business model is unique from other online ticketing platforms and event listing start-ups because they cater to both event goers and event organizers. Event organizers may partner with Hapz and set a price range for their event tickets based on buyer demand, time until the event, competitor’s price, among others.

“While customers can buy tickets on our platform, our main focus is to ensure that they get access to events that are most relevant to them at a price they can afford,” says Wong.

Wong shares that the recent funding will push them to build closer partnerships with merchants and expand regionally to further strengthen their event offerings, with a goal of becoming the number one experience booking platform in Asia.

“Some of the challenges faced by event organizers include how to reach out to the right consumers, event organization and traction -- we realized organizing an event is like setting up a successful new business every 6 months. On the other hand, those looking to attend events are always struggling to get the right information and many times miss out on good events because they didn’t see the advertisement on time or the tickets are too highly prices,” says Wong.

Hapz showed initial success in selling race bibs, which then convinced Wong and his team to further develop the platform. At one point in its pre-funding phase, the team ran an event consulting business to understand more about the pain points of event organizers and attendees.

Knowing more about the failings of existing platforms, Hapz built features that will aid businesses in events organization and marketing, such as dynamic pricing models and customer insights on purchase behaviours, both of which are powered by its proprietary machine learning technology.

As of its launch in May, Hapz shares that they already have 8500 sign ups across Singapore.