Chinese ecommerce giant, Alibaba has acquired a majority stake in TicketNew, Indian online ticketing company with presence in more than 300 cities in India. This is reportedly the first time that Alibaba’s entertainment arm, Alibaba Pictures has invested outside China.
Founded in 2008 by Ramkumar Nammalvar, V Sasi Raman, and Ravishankar Ramanujalu, TicketNew is run under the name of Orbgen Technologies. Like BookMyShow, it provides an online ticket booking platform for plays, movies and events. Recently, TicketNew has also partnered with major multiplexes in the country.
“Given Alibaba Pictures’ operational know-how and financial resources, the partnership can potentially help strengthen the leadership and market share of TicketNew in the ecommerce ticketing space and enable the company to capitalize on the burgeoning consumer market in India,’’ the company stated in an official statement.
The company release also claims that TicketNew holds a strong position in the movie ticketing space in the country (India) due to its “unmatched network” of neighborhood theaters to large cinema chains across urban and rural areas.
“Alibaba plans to invest another $ 18.6 million over the next period,” said Ramkumar Nammalvar, CEO and Founder, TicketNew.
Last year, the Chinese conglomerate made a $4 billion acquisition of the Chinese video site Youku potatoes. Prior to that, Alibaba Film also acquired the movie ticket booking software Yueke. Alibaba already has a major holding for the Indian payment platform, Paytm.
Nammalvar will continue to spearhead the business for TicketNew. It is further revealed that post-acquisition, four Alibaba representatives will join TicketNew’s board and the firm’s promoters will have two of their representatives.
“Online ticketing is increasingly becoming popular in tier-2 and tier-3 regions of India as well. The latest phenomenal movie, Baahubali-2,accounted for over 50 percentage of our ticket sales in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” Nammalvar said.