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E-booking service attracts more players

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CIOL Bureau
Updated On
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 Dheeksha Rabindra

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BANGALORE: Yet another portal added to the cart of online booking.

redBus.in is the first integrated online private-bus booking portal in India, rolled out by Pilani Soft Labs Pvt Ltd.

Phanindra Sama, one of the founders of this portal, came up with this idea, when he failed to get a ticket to his hometown Hyderabad for Diwali last year.

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Three BITS-Pilani alumni - Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri started this company, a one-stop portal to book bus tickets online with all the options available from selecting the bus type, seat preference till confirmation of the ticket.

Talking about its functionality, Sama said, “It has tied-up with 15 travel agents and redBus gets to sell five-six tickets for each bus. Once tickets are sold depending upon the availability, it replenishes the tickets from the concerned travel agent.”

The customers can pay through credit, debit card or through online bank account. RedBus do not charge anything extra.

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Commenting about the safety of online payment Sama said that redBus uses Secure Socket Layers (SSL) data encryption, verified by Verisign. Using SSL ensures that the information exchanged with redBus is never transmitted unencrypted thus protecting the information from being viewed by unauthorized individuals.

Once the booking is done, the customer can either take a print out of the ticket, or furnish the details such as 10-digit alphanumeric code know as ‘redMoney’, bus number and the name of the contact person before boarding the bus.

Privately-run luxury coaches connect almost all prominent cities and towns in south India on a daily basis.

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Sama said, “Presently we cover Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharastra, Goa and Pondicherry. We are setting up a sales office in Hyderabad early next month. Once we set a base in south India, we are planning to establish sales office in Jaipur, Agra and Delhi.”

“Since the day we rolled-out (the service) we have received good response with six lakh hits so far,” he added.

The portal also supports Live Chat services, attending to any queries related to reservation, cancellation, lost ticket, etc.

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iticket.in, is another online ticket distribution network service provider. It enables the customers to check the availability of movie tickets in theaters other than INOX and PVR. The customer can pick up the itickets from the nearest booking center and get it exchanged in the concerned theatre.

Commenting upon the option of having booking centers, Manish Gulechha, operation manager, iticket.in, said, “Our service is focusing more on customers who do not use credit card or who are not computer savvy. It is a better alterative to the home delivery or the tele-booking.”

iticket.in has tied-up with 15 theatres and has more than 50 booking centers in different areas of Bangalore. “We have also tied-up with auditoriums like Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Ranga Shankara and Sathyasai Samsrit Sadana,” he said.

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These auditoriums in host cultural activities and the service of iticket portal has come as a boon to Bangaloreans.

Gulechha added that iticket.in will in future add air, bus and rail reservation facilities too. iticket.in, which raises the slogan ‘any ticket, any where,’ is looking at venture funding to take the concept on an all India basis.

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