Published in theweekendleader.com on July 07, 2014 For 44-year-old Arun Athiappan, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Ticket Goose.com, an online bus ticketing company headquartered in Chennai, an entrepreneur is one who conceives and executes a unique business idea that provides a solution to an existing problem in society. Making a distinction between a businessman and an entrepreneur, he says, “There are tried and tested models like setting up a kirana shop, which require little innovation. Such ventures can be run with the aim of making money.” Arun Athiappan got his first business idea when he was just 12 (Photos: Media Ramu) “But if you wish to be an entrepreneur, you need to have passion for the job, and be prepared to innovate and take risks. Money should not be your primary focus, but your entrepreneurial idea should be driving you,” says Arun, who had dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur from his childhood days. Ticket Goose.com started with an investment of Rs.30 lakhs in 2007 with just two employees has grown into a Rs.55 crore turnover company today. They have 110 employees and offices in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. They work with 800 bus operators, and provide service for 5000 destinations across India. Arun got his first business idea when he was just 12. As kids they used to play tennis ball cricket and lose the ball frequently. Every time they went back to their parents for a new ball, it led to face-offs with them. The idea kept him awake the whole night. He developed the idea further and by sunrise he had a business plan ready to operate “a self-sustaining cricket club”. He had calculated exactly how much each player needed to contribute to buy the bats, balls, stumps and everything else that was needed to start a cricket club.One night a thought came to Arun; why not the kids themselves raise the funds for the ball by contributing Re.1 each! “We formed the Rainbow Cricket Club and the idea worked well,” says Arun, who would spend one more sleepless night years later figuring out the logistics of starting a bus ticketing portal after his friend and co-founder of Ticket Goose.com Karthi Easwaramoorthy mentioned about the scope of such a site while narrating his own experience in booking a bus ticket. Karthi, who was working in the US, had come to his native village, about 30 km from Erode, for a short vacation. When he planned a trip to Chennai to meet Arun, he had to come to Erode to book a bus ticket and lost nearly a whole day in the process. Talking to Arun on the phone, Karthi wondered how nice it would be if there was a site in India like expedia.com that dealt with flight and hotel bookings in the US. It was May 2007, well after Red Bus (redbus.in) had been started, but the sector had not yet picked up in the country. Arun found the idea exciting and it would be one more sleepless night for him. “We did not know about redbus at that time,” says Arun of the undisputed market leader in the bus ticketing segment in India. Red Bus founded in 2006 by Phanindra Sama along with two of his batch-mates from BITS Pilani scripted a success story and finally sold the company to the Ibibo group last year reportedly for a whopping amount of around Rs.700-800 crores. By the time Karthi reached Chennai the next day, Arun had already done his homework, spoken to few people including a bus operator to sketch a business plan. A week later, they had set up an office with two employees. Arun, Karthi – whom Arun got to know while he was working in the US – and Vasu Ramasamy, Karthi’s classmate in college, were the three co-founders of Ticket Goose.com. On how they chose the name for the company, Arun says, “We considered names that would resonate with our customers. Any traveler is migrating from one place to another. We thought of the goose and the salmon (fish). Both migrate thousands of miles. Between Ticket Goose and Ticket Salmon, we chose the first one,” says Arun. Ticket Goose itself has travelled a long way from its humble origins. From a turnover of Rs.60 lakh in the first year, they reached Rs.52 crores last year. They book around 5500 tickets daily; about 40 percent are booked online, and the rest are through agents. They take a ten percent commission on the value of each ticket. The company has many plans for expansion and growth, one of which is to tie up with State run transport corporations. They are already in talks with couple of corporations. They have also increased their media spend and looking at penetrating the North Indian market. For Arun, the present company has been his fourth shot at entrepreneurship. Though he had developed a fascination for entrepreneurship at a young age, his father wanted him to become a doctor. “But I was never interested in medicine. I could only join engineering, since I did not have the cut-off marks for a medical seat,” says Arun, who had studied mechanical engineering from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore. Around 110 employees work for Ticket Goose from offices in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore Though he was unable to fulfill his father’s wish, he lives by the value system his father taught him. “My father was an engineer in the highways department. He always stood for what was right and didn’t mind getting frequently transferred as a consequence of his principled life. While he never preached me on this, I learnt a lot just by watching him doing what was right, irrespective of the consequences.” While in college he looked up to Subbarayan, who had started a mosquito net manufacturing unit in Karur and became a successful entrepreneur. His company went on to become one of the top producers of mosquito nets in town. Subbarayan, a distant relative, was an inspiration to Arun.

Time of India – Published on Jun 30, 2017, 07:56 IST Tamil Nadu Omni Bus Owners Association president A Afzal told TOI, \”GST will not affect bus fares in a big way. There is no service charge for non air-conditioned (A/C) buses anyway. For A/C buses, service charge is lower by 1% under GST\”. Members affiliated to the association operate around 1,000 buses across the state, of which 700 are air-conditioned. Around 50,000 people travel in private buses everyday. The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporations operate around 21,000 buses carrying nearly two crore passengers a day. SETC operates around 50 A/C buses, while MTC and TNSTC also have A/C buses on some routes. Vasu Ramasamy, COO and co-founder of TicketGoose, an online bus ticketing company said, \”From whatever rates have been published so far, service tax will increase from 15% to 18% [on the aggregator\’s commission] when you book A/C bus tickets online\”. He added that GST will bring transparency. \”A section of the bus industry is unorganised, GST will bring every operator into the ambit,\” he said. Traffic and Transportation Forum director V Rama Rao said the GST will not affect passenger fares on non-AC buses. \”On online bus bookings there will be higher tax, but regular A/C bus passengers may not mind the additional charge,\” he said.

Economic Times – Published on March 23, 2017, 09:29 IST Niki.ai is an artificial intelligence firm founded by four friends from IIT Kharagpur- Sachin Jaiswal, Nitin Babel, Shishir Modi and Keshav Prawasi. The startup is bringing conversational commerce to a wide range of services like travel, recharge, utility bill payments and food ordering. Founded in March 2015 and funded by industry heavyweights like Ratan Tata and Ronnie Screwvala, the startup has witnessed blistering growth. In an interview with ETCIO.COM, Sachin Jaiswal, CEO, Niki.ai explains how Niki offers a better customer experience and the ways in which companies can leverage it to enable conversational commerce. I thought we could begin with a little bit of history for our readers who may not know Niki.ai. Could you tell us how you and your co-founders came up with the idea for Niki.ai? What was the rationale behind the startup and what did you set out to do? Niki.ai is a Bangalore -based startup that uses AI to provide conversational commerce across a wide range categories that include utility bills (with100+ operators), recharges, travel services such as cabs, buses and hotel bookings, entertainment services like events and movie ticket bookings, food ordering and home services. From a user standpoint, we saw that there were different use cases that we could address. Buying and selling of a product of service were one such use case and we thought that we could do a good job of it. So in 2015 we started with this particular use case of selling a recharge plan to the user. And we spent roughly six months in building a conversational engine for the recharge plan. Once it received a favorable response we started multiplying our services. We realized that we could do a better job at addressing user queries. We founded the company because we realized that most of the web and app interfaces though they were good they were not the most natural form of consuming a product or service. We thought we could build an engine to drive one- to- one sale at scale. Typically, there are a lot of elements to a sales process. One of the important elements is personalization. If the sales process is personalized the probability of conversion is also higher and customer delight is enhanced. So in May 2015, we started with the use case of selling a recharge plan to the user. We spent roughly six months in building a conversational engine for the recharge plan. The product had initially been in beta for seven months, and the team has focussed on building and enhancing the product while working closely with a limited set of beta users. At that stage, users could book and pay for cabs and perform mobile recharges through the chat interface. Now, of course, we have added a lot more categories, with much more in the pipeline. As a product, we have gone beyond search having built a dialogue manager, which remembers the context of the conversation to engage in a dialogue with the users and helps them get things done. It eliminates the need for several other e-commerce apps to be downloaded on the phone. I want to drill into the value proposition that Niki. ai offers its customers? What is the problem it solves? The value proposition of Niki.ai is that we are offering our partners a fully integrated services marketplace where Niki as a chatbot that can sell you any product or service. Niki is a salesgirl that can talk to you, understand your requirements and drive one- to- one sale at scale. As a conversational commerce bot, Niki does a great job for specific use cases and almost feels like a human-human interaction. It facilitates commerce and banking transactions without getting out of the chat window. Niki helps you cut down on the cost. It makes your brand ubiquitous because the bot is available 24×7. Today, a bank will lose out on the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell to its customers if it doesn\’t have a service marketplace. If the bank knows that a customer has money in his bank account and if he spends on a particular item like clothing or gadgets then the bank can suggest the customer what he can buy it through our integrated services marketplace. PayTM is handling the services marketplace pretty well and that’s one of the biggest threats to the banks. With Niki, we have built the service marketplace and are offering it to the banks and e-commerce services companies. So we are able to build their marketplace and create a level playing field for banks to compete against wallet companies. That’s a perfect segue into my next question. Are there any big customers that have committed to using your chatbot? Absolutely. Niki has been leveraged for HDFC BankOnChat, Chat & Pay with Oxigen Wallet, Intex LFTY with leading OEM Intex, bus booking service platform Ticketgoose and home rental service provider Coho. We enable 50 million human-machine interactions on the platform. After HDFC Bank we have partnered with a lot of banks offering the same integrated services marketplace. I can’t name them until the integration happens but suffice to say we count some of the top private sector banks. Anyone who wants to use our conversational engine can simply integrate our SDK(Software Defined Kit). Niki now has 300,000 users. The highest growth that we are observing is through the SDK. A lot of banks and wallet companies are adopting it. 82.5 percent of our growth is through word of mouth. 15 percent of our customers are acquired through the organic growth. We are seeing a 35 percent month-on-month revenue growth, through our current network of about 50+ partners and 300,000 customers. We generate revenue through a channel partnership model with different service providers. We charge our customers a percentage of the transactions as the commission. Let’s talk about the technologies that go into making Niki? Niki is completely automated. We leverage Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

DECCAN CHRONICLE PublishedDec 26, 2015, 12:21 pm IST Chennai: With the holiday season witnessing an unusual surge in bus travellers to neighboring states, travel agencies complain that a couple of private bus operators are hiking ticket prices to exorbitant levels. A travel agent based at Egmore says that for the last five days certain private travel operators have increased prices by 35 to 40 percent. “Three private operators who are running their services to Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi have charged Rs 2,100 and Rs 2,200 for sleeper tickets for passengers who have booked tickets online,” said a travel agent based in Kennet Lane, Egmore. He also said this is done with the knowledge of the online tour operators with whom these travel agents share a commission. “There are a few bus operators based at Koyambedu who have been meddling in between and making large profits,” he cautioned. However, State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) officials, when contacted, maintained that they are already aware of this and have advised the operators concerned on this hike when the booking season started a week ago.  “From December 22 to 24, we have run 94 special services apart from the regular 512 services that are operating daily. We will continue this until December 31 as we are employing more buses for Sabarimala pilgrimage also,” said an officer at SETC, Ambattur. Meanwhile, according to the latest online ticketing data available on ‘Redbus.in’ and ‘Ticket Goose’, two online ticket operators, all private operators have increased the fares by a minimal sum. “We have raised the price by `200 for the last two days to the fifty services we offer to different cities of the neighboring states. We have mentioned this change on our website too,” said the owner of a bus operator that is operating to different parts of Kerala. “There are days when we operate services to Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram with 10 and 15 passengers with rest of the seats unfilled. It is the festival season such as Christmas, Pongal and Deepavali that we get a major share of passengers. According to the demand we have decided on a minimal increase on each ticket,” he maintained. However, on Thursday, all online tickets to destinations like Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Madurai, Kanyakumari and parts of southern TN have been sold out.  

It is published in hindu Mallika Srinivasan, CEO, Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd, received a Lifetime Entrepreneur Achievement Award from TiE Chennai for steering the company to its position as the world’s third-largest tractor manufacturer. S.S. Badrinath, Founder, Sankara Nethralaya, and winner of last year’s Lifetime Achievement Award, gave the award to Srinivasan at TiECON Chennai 2013. In her acceptance speech, she said: “You need a clear vision and passion for what you are doing. “The world is full of constraints. Entrepreneurs should accept them and adopt different business models accordingly.\” PitchFest “Entrepreneurship in Tamil Nadu is alive and kicking,\” said Lakshmi Narayanan, President, TiE Chennai. Nearly 150 start-ups from across Tamil Nadu participated in this year\’s PitchFest to pitch for investments.Of these, 25-30 start-ups have been shortlisted, he said. Other winners TiECON Chennai also honoured various entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu for their success and contribution to society. This year, TiE Chennai announced eight winners in different categories. Lifetime Achievement Award: Mallika Srinivasan, Chief Executive Officer, Tractors and Farm Equipment Ltd. Dronacharya Award: M. Mahadevan, Chairman, Oriental Cuisines. Entrepreneur of the Year: R. Chellappan, Executive Director, Swelect Energy Systems Ltd. Most Innovative Entrepreneur: Girish Ramdas and Vijaykumar Radhakrishnan, Founders of Magzter. Extraordinary Entrepreneur: Kumar Sitaraman, Udday Kumar Krishnan – Founders, Auromatrix Hotels Pvt. Ltd. Emerging Entrepreneur: Rahoul Jain, Managing Director, Capricorn Foods India Ltd. Impact Entrepreneur: Anil Kumar and Bindu Ananth, Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services, IFMR Trust. Best TiE Associate Member Entrepreneur: Arunkumar Athiappan, Karthikeyan Easwaramoorthy and Vasudevan Ramasamy, Founders, Efficsys Infotech India Private Ltd (Ticketgoose)

It is published in hindu on JANUARY 05, 2017 01:16 IST Now movement of private buses can be tracked through a mobile app Usually, Ukira Pandian will arrive at Madurai Mattuthavani bus stand at 4.30 a.m. to pick up his daughter. But, now a days, he just arrives a few minutes before the arrival of Chennai-Madurai bus, as he keeps tracking the movement of the bus through a mobile app. On the lines of Ola and Uber, a Chennai-based start-up firm has installed GPS-based vehicle tracking system on 200 super deluxe private buses. Thus, Tamil Nadu becomes one of the earliest adopters of this technology. “The new initiative is not only commuter-friendly, but also saves considerable time for us. I keep travelling to Madurai quite frequently. Ever since the introduction of new system, I hardly go to Egmore or Koyambedu as I board the bus at Guindy,” said Mahesh Pandi. Having gone through the pain of wasting several hours just for booking tickets during the festive season and then spending several hours to reach the terminal before the actual departure of buses, the promoters of Ticketgoose.com — Vasu Ramasamy and Karthi — hit upon this IT-based solution of booking ticket with a simple touch. They had to fight several odds to bring travel agencies and private bus operators to come on to a platform to digitize ticket booking. This was followed by installing GPS based vehicle tracking system in over 200 super deluxe buses. Ticketgoose.com co-founder Karthi said: “Generally, travel is associated with three pain points. Firstly, you have to get transport to reach the bus terminal on time. Secondly, you have to find the exact location of the bus and thirdly, you might not know when it will start. We have fitted buses with tracking system to reduce the additional travelling time.” An SMS will be sent to the ticket holder. He can track the movement of the bus on a real-time basis. “In case, he is from south Chennai, he need not go to Koyambedu Bus terminal, but can stand at a place closer to his residence to board the bus on time. SMS intimation will be given to him, when the bus is a few kilometres away from the designated place,” he said. Vasu Ramasamy, COO and Co-founder, said: “Based on our past experience, we started this company to make ticketing and travelling a pleasant experience. Having accomplished the first task, we have moved on to the next task. Currently, we have installed this facility in private buses on a pilot basis.” “As soon as the bus departs from terminus, we start getting alerts for every five minutes. It is more useful for parents to track their children while travelling alone. It is a welcome move and hope even the State Transport Corporations will follow it,” said B. Ashok of T. Nagar. Thozhan Trust organiser M. Radhakrishnan said it would be more useful for the general public, if it was implemented in MTC buses too as more than 30 per cent of people living in the outskirts depend on it. It would be vital to identify the exact spots in case of accident or traffic jam.

This is Published on January 10, 2017 To launch new products, services post cash ban MUMBAI, JANUARY 10 After demonetisation, online bus-ticketing platforms are enhancing their value-added services as more travellers are expected to go cashless while buying bus tickets. Bus travel marketplaces such as Travelyaari, TicketGoose and redBus are trying out new products and services as cashless bus travel gains acceptance, making it a more organised business post demonetisation. “As bus travel goes cashless, we are looking at new services such as dynamic pricing and are in the process of developing an app for our service providers, says Aurvind Lama, CEO and co-founder, Travelyaari. “We intend to increase our end-to-end services by adding weekend getaways, hobby-based activities, rooms, cabs and food services through our transporters and agents. With a GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) of ₹600 crore, we expect to get profitable by the second quarter this year.” Dynamic pricingPlatforms are also considering dynamic pricing to get more travellers on board. For instance, TicketGoose recently tied up with the Chennai Mathematical Institute for data to provide dynamic pricing to its customers. Soon after demonetisation, TicketGoose also partnered with artificial intelligence start-up Niki.ai to launch a chatbot (a conversational app). Niki.ai plans to integrate value-added services such as cab and hotel bookings within the chatbot. Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President and co-founder, TicketGoose, said: “Today, almost 70 per cent of bus travellers are in the 20-35 age group. The updated version of the TicketGoose mobile app through chatbot will provide customers the ease of booking tickets in a conversational manner like a chat. We have a GMV of ₹80 crore, and are planning to raise another $10 million to expand our services.” Naspers-owned redBus, which witnessed a drop in online search and traffic soon after demonetisation, has also expanded its services. New marketsPrakash Sangam, CEO, redBus.in, said: “There has been an increase in conversion rate after demonetisation, with a higher decline in offline sales. We have recently entered the chartered bus space, and are also testing a beta product for pilgrimages. In future, we will have to figure out new markets such as school and corporate travel with different value propositions in bus travel.” The online bus travel segment is estimated to be a ₹30,000- crore category with a CAGR of 30 per cent.

This is published in Hindu on JANUARY 22, 2014 20:40 IST TicketGoose.com, a bus ticketing portal, plans to raise Rs. 75 crore to Rs. 100 crore by June this year. Company President and Co-founder Karthi Easwaramoorthy told The Hinduhere on Wednesday that the company was talking to investors. “The funds will come through venture capitalists mainly,” he said. It raised Rs. 25 crore from Indventure LLC in 2013-2014. TicketGoose.com has invested Rs. 40 crore so far, with 40 per cent of the money being used for information technology (IT) infrastructure. The company had so far focused on the product and technology, and it will now build its brand. The funds to be raised would be used mainly for brand-building. The company is looking at Rs. 120 crore turnover in 2013-2014 and nearly 20 lakh tickets booked through its portal. Last year, the company’s turnover was Rs. 47 crore and 7.83 lakh tickets were booked through its portal. It launched mobile applications for Android and iOS a month ago. The mobile applicationoffers GPS and bus tracking services . The company would continue to focus on bus ticketing as the potential was huge, he said. It had tied up with 700 plus operators and plans to double it to 1500 by the end of next year, he added.

It is published on 22 October, 2012 Online bus ticketing service Ticketgoose, run by Chennai-based Efficsys Infotech India Pvt Ltd, has secured Rs 3 crore ($560,000) from angel investor and former Gums India CEO R Narayanan and a group of other investors based in the US. The Chennai-based startup, which operates from Bangalore and Hyderabad, will use a major chunk of the money to expand its presence into other parts of the country. “We are expanding to other cities, including Pune and Goa and are under the process of setting up offices there. We are also planning to use a part of the funds to innovate our technology in order to provide an enhanced experience to our customers and enable them to book tickets faster,” Ticketgoose co-founder and director Karthi Easwaramoorthy told TechCircle. The startup has already hired 10 in Pune and eight in Goa. “We expect around 500 ticket bookings from each location in the next couple of months,” he added. Launched in 2007 by Easwaramoorthy, Arun Athiappan and Vasu Ramasamy, TicketGoose offers online booking facility, as well as information on pricing and availability, and covers around 4,500 destinations across southern India. The company currently has around 100 employees. In July this year, it raised $800,000 from a few US-based investors and is looking to clock Rs 125 crore revenue for FY13. In last May, Ticketgoose’s competitor and one of the leading players in the online bus ticket booking segment, Redbus secured $6.5 million from a consortium of investors led by Helion Ventures. (Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)

It is published on JAN 09, 2017 TicketGoose’s partnership with Niki aims to enable customers to book bus tickets online through conversing with Niki on the TicketGoose mobile app Niki.ai, a start-up focused on Artificial Intelligence has partnered with online bus ticketing company TicketGoose to provide a simplified and convenient bus ticket booking experience with the launch of an intuitive chatbot. This partnership is aimed at enhancing the customer experience on the mobile app. TicketGoose’s partnership with Niki aims to enable customers to book bus tickets online through conversing with Niki on the TicketGoose mobile app. According to the AI startup, its software stack will enhance customer experience on the mobile app by making it bus ticket booking user friendly. Commenting on the tie up with Niki.ai, Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President and Cofounder, TicketGoose, said: “We have been constantly pursuing interesting partnerships that will enable smart bus travel. Our partnership with Niki.ai was explored keeping this in mind. The updated version of the TicketGoose mobile app will provide customers the ease of booking tickets through a conversational manner.” TicketGoose’s iOS and Android mobile app will both support the chatbot feature. Niki.ai also plans to introduce value added services such as cab and hotel bookings integrated within its chatbot for its customers. Speaking on the partnership, Sachin Jaiswal, CEO, Niki.ai said: “We have worked on a software development kit which is being made available to our partners to integrate on their platforms (app and web) and utilize the technology of AI developed by us. Through our SDK, in less than three hours of integration effort, our partners can replicate the entire transactional experience across services over a chat interface and add value to their consumers.” Niki.ai recently partnered with chatbot banking for HDFC Bank. Together, they have launched a chatbot called OnChat on Facebook’s Messenger platform that claims to allow users to recharge phones, pay utility bills, book cabs from Ola or Uber etc, through a chat.