India’s largest ticketing platform, BookMyShow, is planning to further its grasp on regional markets with its latest acquisition. The company has today announced that it has acquired Hyderabad-based ticketing platform MastiTickets. The transaction details remain undisclosed, but it was an all-cash deal.
MastiTickets was founded by Ravi Narla back in April 2014. The platform has signed up over 120 cinemas across the aforementioned states and will now add to BookMyShow’s hefty collection of screens. This acquisition by BookMyShow is squarely aimed at consolidating their presence across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Further, it will see all of MastiTicket’s key assets including cinema partnerships being transferred to the ticketing behemoth. The company already has over 530 cinema partners in these two states, with 175 being added just in the last twelve months. With MastiTicket’s experience under its belt, BookMyShow will be able to better grasp on the regional movie market.
Speaking on the acquisition, Ashish Hemrajani, co-founder of BookMyShow
We have seen a 30% growth from these markets. Kannada, Telugu, Tamil speaking audiences are some of the most important markets for us. This acquisition will enable us to acquire users in these markets, as well as exclusive access to around 120 cinemas.
We have charted an aggressive growth plan to increase BookMyShow’s reach and presence and the acquisition of MastiTickets fit perfectly into its expansion strategy. Hyderabad, particularly has been a high performing market for us.
The company now plans to focus their resources on building out regional partnerships. This can be seen as the first acquisition in a series of partnerships that are about to herald in the coming months. He has added that there are certain regions in India, which have an interesting entertainment consumption pattern. They have a wide variety of preferences across different categories, genres, and languages.
This investment comes on the heels of the massive $81 million (or Rs 550 crores) funding led by New York-based PE firm Stripes Group. It also saw participation from existing investors, including Network 18, Accel Partners and SAIF Partners. Prior to this, BookMyShow bought fan relationship management and analytics startup Fantain Sports to strengthen its focus on the sports fans in the country.
Also, the ticketing platform had tremendous growth in the first quarter of 2017. It reported a massive 30 percent increase in revenues, now amounting to a total of Rs 78 crores. It completed the sale of over 30 million tickets in Q1’17 as compared to 22 million in the previous one. BookMyShow is also known to handle the ticketing needs of some of the most coveted events in India, including Sunburn Goa, IPL, Pro Kabaddi, Hardwell, to name a few.
