redBus.in : A truly simple online bus ticket booking service

Bus tickets? Really? It sounds less niche/weird when you know that buses are Indians' preferred mode of mass transit. No matter which way you slice it, making bus travel easy for over a billion people is a huge market, and Redbus.in is grabbing it.

                                       
Gone are the days when starting a business needed religious planning, enormous capital and large infrastructure. In the present “knowledge economy”, all you need is your brain and fertile ideas, especially in the IT industry. Entry barriers are at an all-time low and starting a business has never been as simple as now. Only your core functions have to be your own. Everything else, starting from your front desk to your backend IT system, can be outsourced. You don’t need large capital investment; sustained operational expenditure will take care of your near future.

"redBus is founded by 3 of us. Sudhakar, Charan and me.
Sudhakar – 26, B.E (Hons) EEE from BITS-Pilani, 4 yrs exp. at IBM, Bangalore.
Charan – 27, B.E(Hons.) EEE, M.Sc (Hons) Physics from BITS-Pilani, 3 yrs exp. at Honeywell, Bangalore.
Phani – 27, B.E(Hons) EEE from BITS-Pilani, 4 yrs at Texas Instruments, Bangalore.

 The only guiding light was a compelling idea and enthusiasm,” says Phanindra Sama, chief executive officer of Pilani Soft Labs, the promoter of redBus.in. “ When the idea had sprung and we decided to move on. We bought books and learnt how to code,” he quips.


Started modestly in August 2006 with a few seats from one bus operator, redBus today is one of the most successful online bus ticket booking agencies. Today, it has 700 bus operators, 10,000 buses listed on it, works in 15 states and sells around 5,000 tickets every day. They started with Rs 500,000 which was the savings of the three of them. One room of the house where they stayed was their office. In the morning they would keep the other parts closed so that the room looked like an office.


redBus is India’s first organized bus ticket booking service. With services in 15 states, sales offices in 6 locations and daily departures in 2800 routes, They are India’s largest aggregator of bus tickets.
Below are their USPs :

1. Customers can choose their seat – facility which is unique: none of airliners / railways offer this facility.
2. Customers can book return tickets – facility not available at the traditional brick and mortar agents.
3. Multiple bus operators.
4. Standard fares.

The company is often cited as the most successful startups to have leveraged latest technologies and newer business models to the fullest extent. It started by developing applications on the cloud, created the prototype for its backend application, showcased them to prospective customers and eventually scaled and moved all of its applications to the cloud. Right now, almost all of redBus’ IT infrastructure including its customer-facing portal is handled by Amazon Web Services (AWS).


Bangalore-based Pilani Soft Labs, makers of redBus has raised $6 million in Series C funding from existing investors Helion Venture Partners, Inventus Capital and Seedfund. This takes the total venture capital raised by the company to $9.5 million. Seedfund, which seed funded the company in 2008, remains the largest shareholder, said executive director Anand Lunia, confirming the deal.