During Diwali that year, one of the founder Mr. Phanindra Sama, wanted to spend the festival in his home town. Since he didn’t know his schedule till the end, taking a bus was the only choice. He ran around hunting for a bus ticket, but all the tickets had sold out before he reached the travel agents.
It was then that the idea of providing customers the convenience of booking a bus ticket over the internet flashed across his mind. The objective was two-fold – to ensure that they don’t have to leave the confines of their comfort to book a ticket, and to give help them get a ticket when they needed it the most.
The idea was compelling. And why not? The internet was being voted as a medium people couldn’t do without. PC and net penetration was increasing not only in urban areas, but also in rural India with innovative concepts like Shakti and e-Choupal. Also, people were getting used to booking tickets for travel using IRCTC and private airline websites. So, why not buses?
The most compelling reason was that nobody in India had done this! So, when he discussed the idea of starting a business on these lines, his friends were really excited and gave their go-ahead. However, they didn’t want to take the plunge without understanding the full implications of the undertaking. Together they met bus operators, consumers and venture capitalists to gauge how well the concept could work.
When they received a favourable response, they started writing the code for the software that would be required to run the operations. Once this was ready, they put together a business plan and presented it to TiE, Bangalore Chapter.
TiE – the Indus Entrepreneurs – are mentors, to say the very least. They breathe lives into young entrepreneurs who have a working concept. The idea didn’t need much selling to TiE members either. That was the beginning of a seemingly long journey. All the founders of the new venture quit their well-paying, secure jobs and started redBus.
Since those days there have been many ups and downs. It wasn’t simple to change the mindset of bus operators who are used to dealing with their traditional brick-and-mortar travel agents. It wasn’t easy to market the concept. It needed time and money and took a few months for things to fall in place.
All that was needed were a few people who used the website. Once that would happen, the user interface was bound to generate word-of-mouth. That’s exactly what happened. Those who used it liked it, told others and the dominos started to fall in place.
To cut a long story short, redBus has come a very long way from the days of struggle to days of growth. It has the largest number of tie-ups (and growing) with bus operators and a large and satisfied customer base.
Being run by a team of young people, the culture is informal and everyone is ambitious and charged to make it larger than imagined. What started as a team of three grew into a team of 50 within nine months.
redBus has moved beyond providing value over the internet by reaching out to customers using all media that provide them convenience – be it the phone, home delivery, physical outlets or SMS.
