Noah RamirezThe old days of online ticketing are still here with us. A multitude of vendors operate independently of one another, leaving event organizers and would-be attendees confounded by a dizzying array of sites and applications. While most other areas of the business world have gone fully digital, online ticketing remains stuck in 2010, according to Yash Banthia, the cofounder of Avenue Ticketing. Since 2023, Yash and his brother Harsh have been at work sculpting Avenue, trying to get the platform right so that they could build a global ecosystem.
Indeed, change the world.
They have likened it to Shopify, in that it provides event organizers with their own storefronts, their own entryways, their own branding. It also gives them data analytics, aligns with online payment platforms like Stripe, and is constantly being upgraded by the Avenue Ticketing team.
This makes Avenue Ticketing what the competitors are not: accessible, progressive, customizable, and upgradeable. The company currently has a valuation of $1 million and is raising a pre-seed round of funding.
Its aim, says Yash, is to become a unicorn.
Two Entrepreneurial Brothers
Behind Avenue Ticketing’s gambit are two entrepreneurial brothers from India, Yash and Harsh Banthia. Both have experienced the ups and downs of founding new businesses and are now ready to use that hard-earned acumen in the new project. Yash founded Ryde, a ride-sharing startup in India that got more than a thousand new drivers onboarded within a month. Previously to that, in British Virgin Islands, he also built Trapchat, an online dating application that similarly performed well and was recognized by the Prime Minister of BVIs
With Harsh, Yash currently works at Premkamal Spas, a luxury spa management company, in which Yash organized deals with Hilton and Marriott hotels in Hawaii, expanding to 3 additional locations, and pulling in more than $800,000+ in revenue. The Banthia brothers also showed off their knack for technology at Premkamal as they integrated enterprise resource planning software systems and internet of things technology into spa operations. They also began planning AI-operated massage rooms.
“Harsh is as driven as me, he’s brought his instincts and grit to Avenue Ticketing,” says Yash. “Together I think we’re quite a strong team — both balanced and resilient.”
Harsh has a background in computer science but at heart he’s an athlete. He represented the British Virgin Islands in tennis, cricket, and football, and he has channeled that discipline and resilience into his business life. At Premkamal Spas, he serves as business development lead and head of IT, where he has spearheaded the automation of the company’s bookkeeping, and led innovation across the board, from upgrading the firm’s website, to changing how its two dozen employees communicate between each other.
“Tech-driven innovation allows one to scale quickly,” remarks Harsh. “I’ve seen that first hand.”
The Opportunity and the Platform
According to Yash, Avenue Ticketing seeks to enter a multi-billion-dollar global market that is currently underserved. It sees its platform as a replacement for the fleet of online services that are currently used to sell tickets to events, which often come with high fees and are just rigid. Users also have to deal with limited customization options and provider branding everywhere.
“These legacy providers lack agility, personalization, flexibility,” says Yash. “What we can offer is a more holistic, tech-driven approach, one that gives control back to the organizers themselves.”
In addition to being easy to use and competitively priced, Avenue Ticketing’s platform also provides users with valuable data analytics that they can use to gauge customer behavior and improve performance going forward. They can add third-party tools, including those that use AI and machine learning and no coding knowledge is necessary. Once onboarded, customers have access to live data dashboards that allow them to monitor ticket sales, marketing activities and other attendee behavior. They can manage mass emailing and waiting lists for their events. And companies can get payouts the day following their events.
“Our motto is your dashboard, your rules,” says Yash. “Avenue Ticketing is where organizers create brands. We’re building something that organizers can actually own,” he adds.
Built to Scale
According to Yash, Avenue Ticketing has been influenced both by Shopify and Gumroad, and has focused on automation, brand clarity, and onboarding efficiency based on the examples they set. He credits Avenue Ticketing’s decision to use a flexible subdomain system with allowing it to scale. That means Avenue Ticketing offers faster onboarding for new clients, streamlined operations and reduced support burden for organizers, less engineering time spent on manual provisioning, and a stronger market position compared to competitors.
“At Avenue Ticketing, building customer-centric automation into the very core of our infrastructure has enabled organizers to launch, manage, and scale their events with minimal friction,” says Yash. ” And when the architecture aligns with the customer journey, the product becomes easier to adopt, manage, and trust.”
While it’s still early days for Avenue Ticketing, the company has already onboarded many customers and strategic partnerships are planned. Yash reiterated that the company is also in its pre-seed round and has to date successfully built its product, assembled a strong team, and made multiple deals. But this is just the beginning, as Avenue Ticketing aims for unicorn status.
“Avenue wants to become a globally recognized platform,” says Yash. “By giving power back to event organizers, we hope to foster a more diverse, accessible, and thriving event ecosystem.”