Emerging as a leader in digitizing mass participation events and venues through the use of NFC technology, PouchNATION (pouchnation.com) has secured a Series B investment round from Traveloka and SPH Ventures. PouchNATION’s evolution and expansion has come with the success of its innovative cashless wristbands utilized in some of the biggest events in Asia: Zoukout, BeerFestAsia (Singapore), Good Vibes (Malaysia), Sensation (Thailand), etc.
PouchNATION is a leading offline-to-online solution for events and recreational venues space in Asia with offices in Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. The firm provides clients across Asia with a simple, speedy, and secure way to manage crowds, process payments, collect data and much more.
“We are excited to be part of the PouchNATION success story and to support the founders’ vision for the business,” said Sylvia Gunawan, Vice President of Revenue & Growth, Traveloka Xperience.
“We were impressed with the progress they have achieved so far in disrupting the entertainment industry and are very proud to support the PouchNATION team to further evolve their product by leveraging the synergies with Traveloka’s key business, to provide an end-to-end solution for travel and lifestyle needs,” she said. “This is part of our efforts to strengthen our position as a discovery platform and to empower our users to discover the world around them”.
“This investment deal augments PouchNATION’s position as the leader in its sector, but also builds the fundamentals for a broader vision,” said PouchNATION CEO Ilya Kravtsov. “The company plans to transition from being just a service provider for events and venues to being a leading entertainment platform that connects hundreds of thousands of event-goers and attraction seekers across Asia with e-commerce giants, brands and other players seeking to get visibility and exposure among their target customers.”
From its beginnings as a cashless payment wristband for events in 2014, PouchNATION has evolved to become a one-stop solution for the largest event organizers, theme parks and hospitality venues by providing services that range from ticketing/registration, to access control/ security, cashless payments, brand activations, data collection/ insights and others.
PouchNATION’s system currently handles on average over $5 million in transaction value per month, a number sure to grow as the lineup of upcoming clients is growing significantly.
Besides its two existing verticals of PouchEVENTS and PouchVENUES, the company will soon be launching its third line of product, PouchDIGITAL, focusing on providing a more scalable and low-cost solution for event organizers with low budgets but with extremely high-volume events.
“We are very excited to launch our new vertical that will unlock a whole new segment of clients that currently still use very traditional methods to manage events and venues. Furthermore, by digitizing more crowds and by collecting more consumer data, we are on a mission to attract more brand sponsorships to this industry and to eventually create a totally new user acquisition channel in the region,” said PouchNATION COO David Rapaport.
