TOI covered TicketGoose on Mar 27, 2014, 18:47 IST CHENNAI: Online bus ticketing startup ticketgoose.com has raised its second round of funds through crowdfunding, a concept where a group of investors pool in funds to invest in a company. The startup has raised Rs 24 crore from Indventure, a US-based crowdfunding platform. The company used its first round of funding of Rs 6 crore (also through crowdfunding from a bunch of US-based investors) for developing its technology and ramping up inventory, and will now use these funds for marketing and brand building, Karthi Easwaramoorthy, president and cofounder of TicketGoose, said. “The 30,000 crore bus ticketing market is untapped and is growing at about 30% every year. We will focus on marketing our product and expanding our reach,” he said. The Chennai-based company was incorporated in 2007, but began operations in 2009, Easwaramoorthy said. It has tied up with over 1,000 tour operators and works with over 20,000 buses on 20,000 routes. Along with ticketing, the portal has options to book food and travel insurance packages in partnership with Foodbox The company earned Rs 55 crore in revenues last year, and expects to close this fiscal with a turnover of about Rs 70 crore, Easwaramoorthy said. While the crowdfunding concept has been used for events and films in India, Ticketgoose is amongst the first few startups in India to raise funds through crowdfunding. Bangalore-based Connovate Technology which raised about $54,000 in 2013, and Kochi-based RHLvision Interactive LLP, which raised over $200,000 this year, are other Indian startups that took the crowdfunding route.

Published on February 21, 2014 MANGALORE, FEB 21 Online bus ticketing portal Ticketgoose.com has announced the launch of its Android and iOS mobile app. Addressing presspersons here on Friday, Karthi Easwaramoorthy, president and co-founder of Ticketgoose.com, said that the travellers can book tickets through the app. The ‘bus tracking’ option in the app allows the customers to track their buses with frequent updates on the location of the bus. Easwaramoorthy said that the app was developed three months ago, and was introduced among some loyal customers for testing. The customers can now download it from the Google Play store and iTunes store. Asked about the feedback for this app, he said around 300-400 tickets are being sold through this app every day. He claimed that Ticketgoose.com is the only bus ticketing portal to have a dedicated 24X7 customer support service. This service helps the passengers to get information on pick-up points, approximate time of arrival and bus delays. The company has agreement with United India Insurance to offer travel insurance to its customers. An optional service priced at ₹20 extra per passenger, the policy provides personal accident cover for ₹2 lakh a passenger and damage or loss of baggage up to a maximum of ₹15,000. Terming bus ticketing as a ₹30,000-crore market, Easwaramoorthy said only 5 per cent of bus tickets are being sold through online system in the country now. This proves that there is vast potential for bus ticketing market in online space. The company is hoping to close the financial year with a turnover of ₹80 crore, he said, adding that the aim is to touch a turnover of ₹4000 crore in the next five years. He said that the online portal has tied up with more than 700 bus operators in the country and covers nearly 3,000 destinations with 20,000 buses. Published on February 21, 2014

N. RAMAKRISHNANT+ T- bl29 emerge ticketgoose.jpg (from left) Vasu Ramasamy, COO & Founder; Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President & Co-Founder; and Arun Athiappan, Co-Founder & CEO, TicketGoose.com IndiaPvt Ltd. — N. Ramakrishnan bl29 emerge ticketgoose.jpg (from left) Vasu Ramasamy, COO & Founder; Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President & Co-Founder; and Arun Athiappan, Co-Founder & CEO, TicketGoose.com IndiaPvt Ltd. — N. Ramakrishnan Ticketgoose.com launches app for bus ticket booking Chennai-based online portal covers 10,000 routes, books 4,000 tickets/day We are scheduled to meet over lunch in a popular vegetarian restaurant in Chennai. But, following a last minute change, the interaction happens in a small conference room in their office on the south-western outskirts of the city. The restaurant will be too noisy and it will be difficult to have conversation, I explain to the trio – friends and co-founders of online bus ticket booking site TicketGoose.com – on wanting the venue to be changed. We will go for lunch nearby after the interaction, they insist. I start off a bit provocatively. How are you different from redBus, I ask them. redBus is an online bus ticketing company, whose promoters recently sold out to ibibo.com, a company owned by Naspers of South Africa. “I don’t know if you have seen our site. It is totally different from any other player, leave alone redBus, or even probably air ticket players or anyone who is in the ticketing market. What we have tried to do in our site is to make sure that all the decision-making points are visually represented,” says Arun Athiappan, the soft-spoken co-founder and CEO of TicketGoose.com, who at 44 is the oldest of the trio. With more options He explains: “When someone reads through a list the processing that has to happen by the brain is much more. You need just 10 per cent of that effort to do it when things are presented visually.” TicketGoose’s site, he adds, presents details such as the timings, seat availability and seat positioning when a customer opens the site and keys in the journey details. That is a major differentiator; the other being the 24/7 customer service, adds Arun. For instance, he says, their firm does not believe in leaving a customer in the lurch in case a service for which the customer has booked ticket on their site gets cancelled at the last minute. “We try and see how best we can get an alternative ticket,” he adds. Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President and co-founder, recalls an instance when a family that had booked bus tickets to travel from Bangalore to Tiruchi on Diwali eve, found to their dismay that the service had been cancelled. TicketGoose arranged a vehicle at its expense for the family to travel to their destination. Insurance package Another differentiator, Karthi says, is that TicketGoose provides travel insurance as an option while customers book their tickets. For an additional Rs 20, travellers are insured up to Rs 2 lakh for any tragedy, up to Rs 15,000 for loss of baggage and up to Rs 5,000 for consequential loss. That is, if the bus has got delayed and the passenger misses the connection for the next leg of the journey, then he or she gets some compensation. Vasu Ramasamy, COO and co-founder, says TicketGoose has tied up with United India Insurance for a customised insurance package. “Around 20 per cent of our customers prefer insurance right now. We are working with United India to enhance the product,” adds Vasu. As in most such entrepreneurial ventures, there is a personal experience for the idea to originate. Karthi, who was working in the US, had come to India in 2007. He was in his native village of Sivagiri, near Erode, and wanted to visit Arun in Chennai. He had to travel 30 km to Erode to try and book a bus ticket. After which he exclaimed, if only there is a website on which he could have booked the tickets. This set the friends thinking. They met and discussed the idea, after which it was Vasu who got the venture up and running. A couple of years later, both Arun and Karthi quit their jobs and got involved in TicketGoose full time. TicketGoose was set up in 2007, but the real business kicked off only in 2009. They started off with one engineer in a single-room office, and now have 130 employees with offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad also. The company has tied up with 700 bus operators, 20,000 buses, 10,000 routes. Turnover target In the first year, its turnover was Rs 60 lakh, which increased to Rs 7 crore the next year and Rs 52 crore last year. This financial year they hope to end with Rs 80 crore. About 3,500-4,000 tickets are booked on the site every day and the firm gets 10 per cent of the value of the ticket as its share. TicketGoose has also developed a software called Vahana, for which it gets usage fees from bus operators. Apart from the Rs 30 lakh invested by the three, they have raised about Rs 24 crore, including from an angel investor, R. Narayanan of Chennai Angels, who is also their mentor, and two rounds of institutional fund-raising. Karthi attributes the growth of their venture to three factors – the team; their mentor R. Narayanan, whom they met at a The Indus Entrepreneurs event and who helped them organise their business, value it and opened their eyes to the huge market potential that the business had; and, finally, the fact that the three stayed focussed. To raise funds According to them, they do not expect to break even in the immediate term. They are looking to raise another round of funds in the latter part of 2014. “Whatever it takes, we want to bring about that disruptive change in the industry,” says Karthi. They admit that it is a touch challenge, as the bus industry, more so in the North, is largely unorganised. They have also not tied up with any State Government undertaking,

TicketGoose.com – Making Bus Travel Convenient Since 2007.  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. Vasu Ramasamy, Karthi Easwaramoorthy and S Swaminathan – Founding Team of TicketGoose.com 09November, 2016by Sujata Sangwan Print this articleFont size –16+ 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.