Explara, the Bangalore-based online ticketing platform, has raised $486K in a pre-Series A round of funding from Ness Wadia, Singapore Angels and Hyderabad Angels. The round also saw existing partners Blume Ventures, Krishna Lakamsani, and Google’s Rajan Anandan participating.
As per the deal, Krishna Lakamsani, an investor parter at Hyderabad Angels and P S Sreekanth, Investment Director at Hyderabad Angels, will join Explara’s Board as Director and Observer respectively.
The newly raised capital will be used by the company to roll out its movie ticketing platform next month, which will then compete with the market leader BookMyShow, India’s largest entertainment ticketing website.
To roll out its movie ticketing portal, the company has already tied up with more than 30 single theatres and multiplexes in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Currently, the company has more than 10,000 suppliers on board, with access to inventory for various event and activity happening in multiple cities. To enable the marketplace model on consumer side, the company has also recently launched “City Experience Discover” mobile app.
Explara was founded in 2009 by Santosh Panda and Ashok Kumar, handles about 1,000 transactions a day and expects revenue of Rs 50 crore for financial year 2015-16. Earlier this year, it had acquired IndianStage, a ticketing platform for performing arts.
Santosh Panda, founder and CEO of the company, said,
We have integrated the movie ticketing platform with Ola and Paytm to create an experience around it. For other events, we are exploring distribution partnerships with travel sites for location-specific recommendation and other institution partners.
