Thailand’s Event Pop raises $2M to expand its ticketing service in Southeast Asia

Event Pop, a two-year-old digital ticketing startup from Thailand, has raised a Series A round of over $2 million to expand its product and move into new markets.

The round was led by Thai investors InVent, a subsidiary of the parent of operator AIS, and Kasikorn Bank’s $30 million Beacon fund. Event Pop had previously raised $500,000. One of its backers is millionaire businessman Ittipat “Tob” Peeradechapan, who owns seaweed snack company Tao Kae Noi, and it has unnamed investors in Japan.

Event Pop helps event organizers with their ticketing and marketing efforts. It services include access control, cashless payments, data collection and management, and monitoring and analytics. To date, it has handled over 3,000 events, which it said includes gigs, festivals, live shows, sports and businesses seminars.

Beyond a website, its mobile app goes beyond finding and booking events to act as an entry ticket and, in some cases, a method to make cashless payments when at the event itself using NFC. (No more fiddling for cash at a gig.)

Event Pop CEO Pattaraporn “Max” Bodhisuwan told TechCrunch that the plan is to invest in new areas for services, and look into the potential to expand to parts of Southeast Asia and East Asia.

Bodhisuwan isn’t saying too much about the countries just yet, but you’d imagine that Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, is on the list.

In terms of product, Event Pop has already gone beyond ticketing after adding in-event payments. Bodhisuwan said it will look at more features for festivals, sporting events and businesses to help event organizers and attendees get more both during the events themselves and outside of them, too.

A regional expansion would pit Event Pop against other ticketing companies that include Japan’s Peatix, Singapore-based EventNook and global players like Eventbrite.

Note: This article has been updated to correct the size of the round.