The Social Media influence is very high; it can take or break a business: Anoop Menon, CTO, redBus

Founded in the year 2005 and part of the Ibibo Group, redBus is India’s prominent bus ticketing and hotel room reservation platform offering services over 80,000 routes across the Indian sub-continent. redBus is a real story of how technology has made the life easy for common traveller.

Before the existence of redBus in the travel sector, the bus industry was very fragmented, and was not strategized in the way of operations. Hence passengers used to directly go to any boarding place or a bus stop and get a paper ticket. “Previously in the years of 2005-2006 or even earlier, passengers only availed the services from offline agents to book a bus ticket. Proliferation of smart devices and increased adoption of internet has been the key to our business, says Anoop Menon, CTO, redBus.

Online Platforms Gaining Momentum

PC and net penetration have been increasing not only in urban areas, but also in rural India with innovative concepts like Shakti and e-Choupal. As people were getting used to booking tickets for travel using IRCTC and private airline websites. Therefore, they also started opting the online platform for booking bus tickets. redBus has come a very long way from the days of struggle to days of growth. It has one of the largest number of tie-ups with bus operators and a descent customer base.

With the advent of technology, background check for each of the bus companies has become mandatory. The moment a passenger receives a confirm ticket, the back end checks on the entire background of the bus company is done in which the owners do not come into the picture. Over the last few years, this fragmented ecosystem of the bus industry has completely changed. “The change by redBus was initially started by approaching the bus operators. The initiative taken by redBus led other companies in the same sector to create bus ticketing software. The arrival of technology has simplified the entire bus ecosystem. With facilities including the choice of seats and their pricing has also geared the industry to penetrate well amongst the users.”

Geographical Reach and Scale of Business

A large portion of the crowd is yet to move into the online part of the bus ticketing platform. There are more than 1800 operators available on redBus platform through which the company caters to around 60- 70 cities. Menon informs, “If you look at the bus operator’s availability, then we have reached 50% or more, that does not include our RTG, and it mainly mentions about the private operators. The operators mostly include the private players. If you look at the south region, which majorly includes the operating cities of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, we a have much higher listing as compared to our numbers in the north. The bus industry is more prominent in the south, followed by west, north and east respectively.”

Social Media Impact

Menon believes that social media is playing a crucial role in today’s business scenario where key decisions are taken on the account of real-time information. “The social media influence is very high; it can actually take or break a business. One of the main elements to drive prominence in this business is by SEO activity. The customers are dismantled; being a marketplace for bus operations, we have developed a social media platform that is utilized by travellers to report concerned issues. Be it a complaint about the bus operator, or a delay, or the arrival and departure time all of them are regularly posted as a feedback on the platform. We cater to the issues following our policies.”

Transparency through Technology

The company focuses on making the communication process between the operator and the traveller a lot more transparent. “We have curated the process where the bus operators can communicate with the customers and the same is applicable to the customers as well. We have to look into the fact that the passenger is assured from our end and we have also received appreciations for our transparent policy as it helps the customers to even speak to the high designates in the operating system to raise their concerns,” explains Menon.

The technological influence has elaborated the usage of online platforms and also enhanced the ways to serve the customers in a better manner. The tracking option for buses across routes has given a boost to the services. One can actually get an idea about the number of buses running on a particular road. Elaborating on the company’s future plans with respect to technology, Menon says, “For the last few months, we have had a progressive set of activities. The focus was mainly around the technological part of the process, along with service enhancements. We are also in the process to maintain a big data inventory for our systems. We are working on the real time data process as a part of our advancement. So the overall experience so far has been good.”