One painful bus booking experience was all it took for Karthi Easwaramoorthy, Co-Founder and President of
TicketGoose.com to start this online bus booking service. After living in the US for 15 years, Karthi visited India during his annual vacation and realised that bus booking still remained the same tedious process for over a decade. Staying in a village 30 Km from Erode, the only means for Karthi to book a confirmed bus ticket to Chennai was to bother a relative to travel a long distance and collect the ticket to pass on to him because the bus operator refused to keep the ticket for Karthi to collect in the evening fearing that he might not show up. When he discussed this painstaking experience with his friends in Chennai, a business idea was born, leading to the inception of TicektGoose.com in 2007.
Since then, the founding team, comprising Karthi Easwaramoorthy and Vasu Ramasamy, has been focussing entirely on revolutionizing the bus industry by making online bus ticket booking easier. Earlier this year, the company brought on board S Swaminathan, who has joined the TicketGoose.com team as Chief Financial Officer. With 80 employees on board, the company receives bookings of 2000-4000 tickets on a daily basis; in fact 35% of the bookings are made by repeat customers. TicketGoose.com has around 5 lakh customers and has steadily built a business between 85 to 100 crores.
80% of the Indian population still use bus as a primary mode of travel. The online bus ticket booking industry has immense potential, as the Indian travel industry grows 30% gross every year. Every year, people are constantly finding new places to visit and they need to find a suitable mode of transport. For many, bus is the first choice. Another important factor aiding to the growth of bus travel is the excellent roadways that the Government has built in order to increase connectivity. The timely arrival of Multinational bus manufacturers like Volvo, ISUZU, Carnia, etc has helped to improve the quality of luxury bus travel. In fact, it is safe to say that some of these buses provide travellers the feel of business class flight travel.
TicketGoose.com reaches out to customers through a network of 7000 agents. The company has an exclusive portal for all its agents called Goosestore.in. Through this website, agents can register and book tickets for customers. With an extremely strong agent network, 65% of the bus tickets are sold to agents through this portal.
In addition to this, customers can book tickets directly on the TicketGoose website or via the app. The app has been designed in such a way that customers can book a bus ticket in three simple steps alone: Download, Select and Pay online.
TicketGoose.com received $6 million (Rs.36 Crore) as part of series A funding. Next year the company plans to raise a series B funding of 15 Million Dollars for many initiatives that are in the pipeline. The company’s overall focus to raise funding is to make bus travel a preferred mode of transportation, through its innovative services and seamless customer experience.
With customer delight being the main focus of the business, Karthi mentions small ways in which TicketGoose.com has helped their customer when bus services were cancelled last minute,“A customer’s bus was cancelled and he wanted to go home for Diwali with his family so we managed to arrange a 4 wheeler so their travel would be convenient. Such instances of customer satisfaction are our best moments.” Another instance was when our customer was so happy with our services that he came on board with our team as an investor.
Karthi feels their biggest learnings in the business has revolved around providing their customers with the best possible experience. The entire team of TicketGoose.com has been trained in such a way, that customer expectations are prioritised to the maximum.
Incidentally, this is also an important point that today’s entrepreneurs need to remember. A company’s success will depend entirely on how much priority a customer is given in the business. Start-ups will need to keep track of their customer’s buying pattern and understanding each and every customer of theirs. However, the bottom line is that a start-up journey is fraught with many challenges and the biggest strength for any company are the people.
