The idea Of RedBus
The founder Phanindra Sama
during his Diwali vacation of 2005 was on the way to his home town
Hyderabad. Making the plan in last moment left him with a single option to take
a bus to reach his home.
Phanindra roamed the whole city
and looked everywhere for a ticket, but it was all sold out before he reached
the travel agents. He then realized some major issues with the then-existing
model:
Travel agents don’t have all
the information regarding all the possible bus operators. This lead to a gap
and customers had to take decisions based on limited information.
Most of the agents were not
able to sell return bus tickets.
It was the time when Phanindra
thought about the opportunity to solve this issue by laying out all the
relevant information on a platform where customers can access it easily and
take better decisions. The internet was the best medium to deliver all this
information and make possible e-commerce to purchase return bus tickets. Thus
this was the beginning of redBus.
About the RedBus
RedBus is India’s largest
online bus ticketing platform, trusted by over 6 million Indians. Three BITS
Pilani alumni Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri
co-founded redBus. Started steadily in August 2006 with a few seats from a
single bus operator, redBus today is on the forefront of the ticket booking
service with a sale of over 6, 00, 00,000 tickets via web, mobile, and various
bus agents. RedBus operates on over 80, 000 routes and is associated with 2300
reputed bus operators. Today you can book a redBus ticket at over 30,000+
outlets!
Growth and Revenue
RedBus started in August 2006
with INR 500, 000 which was the savings of the three co-founders. Operations
and all the work started from a room of his house which was so called their
office. They keep other parts of the house closed so that it gives then a
feeling of working in an office. Three more relatives joined hands with him to
help in the project.When the prototype was ready,
they went to the bus operators and tried selling it to them, but the bus
operators were not even willing to take it for free. Then they went to TiE,
Bengaluru with their business plan. TiE allotted them three mentors to advice
on the project.
The first year was not a full
year and we did Rs 50 lakh worth of business in the first financial year. There
were no profits. Second year till the end of
financial year 2008, it was a huge success. The turnover was INR 5 crore. In 2009, the company grew six
times and the turnover was INR 30 crore. In March 2010, the company had INR 60
crores turnover. Today, RedBus has more than 2
crore users, 30,000+ outlets, 80, 000 routes and 2300 bus operators belonging
to 24 states apart from road transport corporations of 5 states, and16000 daily
uses. Earlier they crossed 10 million
marks in no. of tickets sold in July 2012 and sold of 12 million tickets a
year. It has $200+ million Gross Merchandise Value. RedBus has been sold to
ibibo group for $110 million. In mid of 2015, ibibo Group
rolled out redBus in Singapore and Malaysia. With this launch, redBus is now
available for travelers to book inter-city bus tickets between Singapore and
Malaysia, and intra-city tickets within Malaysia.
No comments:
Post a Comment