Kenyan fintech Cloud9 acquires digital ticketing platform Mtickets
What's the deal? Cloud9, a Kenyan digital banking startup, has acquired MticketsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a digital ticketing platform that has processed over one million tickets since its 2014 launch. The deal embeds financial services directly into the ticketing experience. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Cloud9 was founded in 2025 by Tesh Mbaabu, a serial entrepreneur who previously built Marketforce and ChpterAI. Mtickets was founded by Brian Bogonko.
As a first step, Cloud9 will offer credit lines tailored for event organisers — funding logistics, smoothing cash flow, and reducing the financial risk promoters face when carrying significant upfront costs before ticket revenue comes in.
Why now? Kenya's live events sector has grown significantly in recent years, with concerts, corporate events, and sports fixtures increasingly shifting to digital ticketing. The deal positions the combined platform to offer organisers both the infrastructure to sell tickets and the financing tools to fund events — a pairing neither company could deliver alone.
What could go wrong? Neither company disclosed a timeline for when integrated financial products will be available to the public. Extending credit to event organisers — a segment prone to unpredictable demand and cancellation risk — carries real underwriting challenges. Cloud9 is also barely a year old, and integrating an acquisition this early tests both its operational capacity and its balance sheet.
The signal: Cloud9's move to acquire rather than build ticketing infrastructure mirrors a wider pattern in African fintech — embedding financial services into existing vertical platforms with proven traction. With both Cloud9 and Mtickets classified as early-growth companies on Dealroom, the deal is a bet that bundling credit and payments on top of a platform that has already processed over one million tickets can accelerate growth faster than either company could manage independently.
Read more: techwithmuchiri.com
