Zaiko KK (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Malek Nasser), which provides an electronic ticket sales and data platform for both offline and paid streaming tickets, raised its Series A round with North Base Media (http://northbasemedia.com/) and Monex Ventures Co., Ltd. (https://www.monexgroup.jp/en/group_companies/mbi.html) as underwriters. Zaiko has raised a total of US$1 million (approximately 105.3 million yen) and is aiming to close the series B round in early 2021. Zaiko will use the Series A financing on the development of new technologies and further grow the business.
■Zaiko is breaking new ground in the entertainment industry
Many events have been canceled or postponed due to the spread of COVID-19, leaving event operators and artists no place to generate revenue from live performances or events.
While the entertainment industry as a whole is being hit hard with event cancelations, Zaiko has held over 1,700 live streaming events in the five months since it developed its paid live streaming platform. Not only that, but Zaiko has sold tickets to fans in more than 30 countries around the world. As of July 2020, Zaiko has sold approximately 500,000 live streaming tickets, helping the entertainment industry as a whole by opening up a new source of revenue as offline tickets ground to a halt.
Zaiko continues to build new fan and artist-friendly features that will ensure that paid live streaming will be more than a passing fad.
· North Base Media, Inc. co-founder Sasa Vucinic
“We think that Zaiko’s innovative product created a new, niche market in the domain of events, as it allows artists and content creators of every kind to perform directly to their cyber audiences, giving them full control over all aspects of performance and monetization. Zaiko, in fact, created a new type of events - events that are in between the live performance and the recorded one. We are very excited to help the company make this innovation global, and bring it to the other markets.”
· Yo Nakagawa, Executive Officer, Monex Ventures, Inc.
“Zaiko caught our attention as the market leader in Japan for streaming events. We were impressed with their ability within a few days to pivot their business model and become profitable within a short period of time. Monex is looking forward to helping Zaiko fulfill its potential as a company.”
■Malek Nasser, Zaiko CEO & Founder
“We are very excited to be closing our Series A round with great partners like North Base Media and Monex. We feel that having these partners moving forward will allow us to reach beyond our current business in order to scale to the next level.”