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Mr. Sama spoke about founding redBus, India's largest bus ticketing company. He started redBus in 2005 with friends from BITS Pilani to solve the hassle of booking bus tickets through agents. RedBus grew exponentially at 25% annually and became the largest online bus ticketing platform in India with over 4,500 routes. While none of the founders had a computer science background, their education from BITS Pilani gave them the confidence to start the company. RedBus was later acquired by Ibibo Group for Rs. 780 crore, one of the most successful startup exits in India.

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Sucharitha Ramineni
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135 views1 page

Redbus PDF

Mr. Sama spoke about founding redBus, India's largest bus ticketing company. He started redBus in 2005 with friends from BITS Pilani to solve the hassle of booking bus tickets through agents. RedBus grew exponentially at 25% annually and became the largest online bus ticketing platform in India with over 4,500 routes. While none of the founders had a computer science background, their education from BITS Pilani gave them the confidence to start the company. RedBus was later acquired by Ibibo Group for Rs. 780 crore, one of the most successful startup exits in India.

Uploaded by

Sucharitha Ramineni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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STARTUP STORY OF redBus

&
CHALLENGES OF INDIAN STARTUPS

SPEAKER: Mr. PHANINDRA SAMA

DATE: 16th October, 2014

VENUE: Telepresence room

ABSTRACT:
The interaction proved to be very informative and helpful for all students. Mr. Sama spoke
about his journey with redBus. He elaborated how an EEE pass out from BITS Pilani started the
country’s largest bus ticketing company. He shared his experiences and the struggles he faced in
starting his idea of redbus.in and making it a Rs. 1000 crore company in 7-8 years time. In the end
was a question and answer session where all doubts were thoroughly explained. It proved to be a
very engaging talk right till the end.

SPEAKER’S PROFILE:
Mr. Sama is the Founder and CEO of redBus, India’s First and largest Online Bus Ticket
Booking Service. He received his Electrical Engineering degree from BITS Pilani and Post- Graduation
from Indian Institute of Science. Prior to redBus, he worked at ST Electronics and Texas Instruments.
He hails from Nizamabad, Andhra Pradesh.

LECTURE SUMMARY:
Mr. Sama went on to explain how the earlier bus ticket booking system was tedious and full
of hassle, which involved calling agents who might not have prior information of all the buses.
redBus was an innovative idea to solve a bigger problem of getting tickets of buses comfortably. The
founders, Mr. Sama, Mr. Sudhakar and Mr. Charan , friends from BITS Pilani, used to work in
Bangalore at the time.

Started in 2005, today redBus is the largest online bus ticketing company in India. It has the
largest network of bus operators .It offers over 4500 routes across the Indian map. Customers can
book tickets as per their convenience – be it the phone, home delivery, physical outlets or even SMS.
The company saw an exponential growth of about 25% per annum which was a huge motivation for
Mr. Sama.

Mr. Sama said, however none of the founders were from computer science, but their
education from BITS helped them a lot in terms of confidence level. Major push for the decision of
red bus was when they were selected by TiE for incubation program.

Finally, Mr. Sama’s exit came a year after the Bangalore-based ticketing portal got acquired
by travel aggregator Ibibo Group, owned by South African investment firm Naspers, for Rs. 780-
crore. The acquisition was termed by investors and market watchers as the most successful exit for
any entrepreneur in the ecommerce space so far.

By: Tejas Agrawal

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