Selling tickets online in India is not the same job as selling tickets in the US or Europe. Your guests pay with UPI. They expect a confirmation on WhatsApp within a minute. Your college or venue wants a list of names at the gate, not a screenshot of a payment. And you need the money in an Indian bank account, in rupees, after the event — not locked in a foreign payout schedule.
This guide is for organizers choosing a platform: student fest teams, community hosts, and anyone running a paid meetup for the first time.
What “selling a ticket” actually has to do
A ticket sale is four steps. If any one of them is manual, you will spend the week before the event chasing people.
- A page with the date, venue, price and a single buy button.
- A payment the guest can finish on their phone. In India that means UPI, cards and netbanking — UPI is what most students actually use.
- A ticket that is unique to that person, usually a QR code, sent as soon as payment succeeds.
- A payout of what you earned, in INR, to the account you registered, after platform and payment fees.
WhatsApp “pay this UPI ID and send a screenshot” covers step 2 and nothing else. You cannot scan a screenshot at a busy gate, you cannot prove who paid twice, and you cannot hand a sponsor a real attendance number.
UPI is the checkout, not the whole system
UPI is how the guest pays. It is not a ticketing system. A proper checkout does three things a personal UPI ID does not:
- It marks the seat as sold only after the payment succeeds, so you do not oversell.
- It attaches the payment to a name, phone number and email.
- It issues one QR ticket per person, which your team scans at the door.
On Tunyt, paid tickets go through Razorpay, so guests can pay by UPI along with the other methods Razorpay supports. Free events do not carry a platform fee. On paid tickets, Tunyt’s default platform fee is 2.5% of the ticket face, and the payment gateway fee also defaults to 2.5%. GST at 18% applies to the platform fee. You can set, per ticket type, whether the host or the buyer bears those fees. Treat the defaults as a starting point and read them on the ticket you publish — they are not a surprise percentage invented for a blog post.
QR tickets are what make the gate work
After payment, each guest should get their own ticket. At the door, a volunteer scans it. A good check-in flow tells you:
- This ticket is valid for this event.
- It has not already been scanned.
- How many people are inside, while the queue is still moving.
That is the difference between a fest that knows its footfall and a fest that argues with a crowd. The full door setup is in QR code tickets and event check-in.
Payouts: ask these questions before you sell a single ticket
Before you pick a platform, write down the answers. If the sales page cannot answer them, do not put your fest on it.
- Currency. Will you be paid in INR to an Indian bank account?
- What is deducted. Platform fee, payment-gateway fee, and GST — and whether the guest or you pays them.
- When. After the event, or on a rolling schedule? Is there a minimum amount?
- If you refund. Does the guest get their money back, and do you get the fees back?
- Who owns the list. Can you export names and phones after the event, or does the platform keep the audience?
“Free to list” is not the same as “free to sell.” A tool with no monthly fee can still take a cut of every paid ticket. That is normal. What is not normal is discovering the cut on payout day.
How to choose a platform in one afternoon
Score each option against the event you are actually running.
- College fest or tournament. You need ticket tiers, team registration, custom questions (college, in-game ID, T-shirt size) and QR check-in. Start with the college fest playbook.
- Paid meetup or workshop. One or two tiers, UPI checkout, a simple guest list. Early-bird pricing is covered in how to price ticket tiers.
- Free community gathering. You may not need payments at all. You still need a headcount and a way to check people in.
- International community tool. Pretty pages are not enough if your guests cannot pay with UPI or you cannot withdraw in rupees. See Luma vs Tunyt.
A simple launch sequence
- Publish the page with the real venue, time and refund rule.
- Open a small early-bird tier so the first buyers have a reason to pay now.
- Send the link to your WhatsApp groups and Instagram on the same day. The promotion plan is in Instagram and WhatsApp without ads.
- Check that a test purchase sends a QR ticket to a phone you control.
- The day before, confirm the scanner works on the network you will actually have at the venue.
Ready to sell tickets?
Create the event, set your tiers, and let guests pay with UPI. Each successful payment gets its own QR ticket.