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Make Way For Online Bus Service www.redbus.in
Posted by Pradeep Sadanapalli | April 12, 2008 | 430 views
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Loading ...It’s one thing to have a business idea and altogether another thing to be able to monetise it effectively. Five young men in Bangalore are doing that and more by selling bus tickets online.
‘India is beautiful, experience it by road.’ That’s the tag line that an enterprising group of five young entrepreneurs in Bangalore use to sell more than 1,000 private bus tickets online everyday. This is a service that found its origin two years ago when a graduate from BITS Pillani was unable to buy a bus ticket for his journey to Hyderabad.
It was a minor inconvenience but one that led to a discovery that would bring five young graduates together as entrepreneurs. There wasn’t a single window in the country where a traveler could book bus tickets online! Enter- redbus.in, a website meant to target that very problem. But it was not that easy to convince bus service operators that the idea would work.
“For them Internet, home delivery, call center and all that was something which would work only for airlines. So, we took one-week grace period and said “we sell so much inventory” now bus services are coming to us. We started in August, September, October and December was the holiday season and the Bangalore office broke even,” said Phanindra Sama, CEO, redbus.in.
Today Redbus has over 250 bus operators on its list making it India’s largest private network covering over 3,600 routes. In a short span of one and half years, the company boasts of 65 employees call centers and 6 branch offices in Karnataka (or Bangalore).
“Every branch office we start we break even in 100 days that’s the minimum. This December we broke even the complete operations including salaries and every thing,” said Phanindra Sama.
With no direct competition in sight, it’s been quite a joy ride these past few months for both the company and its employees.
With Redbus planning to start its services in 5 languages across India, there will be many more members added to this happy family.
But the big challenge for the company comes from the state bus service network which is still far cheaper and hence has a much larger market share. It’s a network that accounts for 50% of the industry’s market share and is still not a part of Red bus. Clearly, the company has to cross many more milestones to acquire that critical mass.
SOURCES:
Money Control
Topics: Services, Travel, Business News |
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