Published in travelbizmonitor.com TicketGoose.com, an online bus ticketing portal, has tied up with United India Insurance to offer its customers travel insurance. The policy will provide personal accident cover along with coverage for bus travel-related risks like emergency medical expenses, damages or loss of baggage, and any consequential loss due to disruption of travel. The insurance policy is particularly aimed to secure bus travellers and the insured’s family, a release stated. The personal accident cover is Rs two lakh per passenger, damage or loss of baggage is for maximum Rs 15,000, emergency medical expenses are covered up to the amount of Rs 10,000, and consequential loss due to disruption of travel is covered up to Rs 5,000. TicketGoose.com’s travel insurance policy is an optional value-added service priced at Rs 20 extra per passenger, offered in addition to the cost of each ticket booked on the portal, the release added. The policy can be availed of on the portal at the time of booking tickets. Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President and Co-founder, TicketGoose.com, said, “The launch of this product is in line with our vision of enhancing the bus travel experience for our passengers. This product is an added solution for covering bus travel related risks, along with medical and other value-added benefits that will provide security to our customers while travelling. There are several customers who are already opting for this service and we hope this will provide travel enthusiasts with a secure and trouble-free bus travel.”  

Published in DataQuest Online bus ticketing company TicketGoose.com has partnered Niki.ai, a start-up focused on Artificial Intelligence, to provide customers with 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 will enable customers to book bus tickets online through conversing with Niki on the TicketGoose mobile app. The artificial intelligence software stack that Niki.ai provides will enhance customer experience on the mobile app by making it bus ticket booking user friendly. 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. Commenting on the tie up with Niki.ai, Mr. 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.” Speaking on the partnership, Mr. 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 will allow users to recharge phones, pay utility bills, book cabs from Ola or Uber etc, through a chat.

Published in FirstFewCustomers Arun Athiappan, Co Founder and CEO of Ticketgoose, began the company along with Karthi Easwaramoorthy and Vasudevan Ramaswamy. Arun was an entrepreneur in the past from 1992 till 2000 and was an IT consultant for a few years before stating once again With his neighbor Karthi who was in the US for almost 15 years, Karthi had worked with very large companies such as Sun, Cisco, HP etc. Vasu who was an entrepreneur all through his life was Karthi’s classmate. The story began when Karthi had to spend one whole day of his 15 day vacation from the US to buy a bus ticket to meet Arun in Chennai. Frustrated, he called Arun to check if there was something like expedia in India for bus tickets. Realizing that nothing else was there, they decided to build one and that is how Ticketgoose began by Aug 2007. Ticketgoose was a two sided marketplace that aggregates tickets from the operators on one side and has customers on the other side. The usual practice was that the bus operators would share the inventory(ticket availability per route) to the agents and  the agents will inform the operators two to three hours ahead of the departure of the bus. The founding team was very excited that they were going to disrupt the entire industry with a new way to do business. They went with full enthusiasm to all the bus operators and began pushing the internet way of selling and getting access to a new generation of customers who will only use website as a way to buy tickets. They were doing this for a few months but found out that no bus operators were willing to sign up in-spite of a good value proposition that they offered. Arun, in a chance meeting with his friend was discussing this and realized that what the bus operators wanted was to sell tickets and not at all interested in a disruptive and a next generation technology or buyers. Arun and team repositioned their services and went back to the operators and spoke to them like they are another agent and asked them to give them a quota like they would give to another agent and that began working. Now the business began taking off and they began making money.Based on them selling better, the operators began giving them additional quota of tickets. Arun says that the lesson leant here was not to build a product that would disrupt the business models of the customers but to layer it in such a way that this product works along with the existing model. A product needs to have enormous clout and traction in the market to be able to disrupt models which no startup will have. Arun recollects the day when the team decided to flip back to their earlier business model and no longer wanted quota of tickets but wanted to see the real time availability of tickets on the net for their subscribers to buy online. Arun realized that to be able to access the inventory real time, the operators also needed to be on a software platform into which Ticketgoose can hook into. Less than 1% of the operators were online and even the larger ones were not willing to work on the API model. Ticktgoose began building the software platform and hosted it on the cloud and began offering free of cost software to the operators so that they can go online. The product called “Vahana” enabled the operators to manage the tickets, the backend process, phone booking, manage P&L etc. Arun was surprised that only 5 to 6 operators signed up for the entire one year inspite of them giving it free. They took another decision and began charging the operators on usage model(Per month Per bus) and suddenly they got around 40 new operators within one year. When they went in and quizzed the operators on why they did not choose the free software, they were surprised that the operators had perceived the product value to be low when it is given free and equated free to unreliable and low quality products/services. Once Ticketgoose started charging, the operators felt that Ticketgoose was serious about this business and could be relied upon to provide quality support. Arun says that the second lesson the team learnt was that free products always does not mean that the product will sell well. Often the reverse could be true and the free tag can create a perception of low value among customers. Now Ticketgoose (www.ticketgoose.com), has 80 operators on the platform and has around 4,50,000 subscribers who have used the Ticketgoose for their bus ticket booking needs. TiE has chosen Ticketgoose founders as the best upcoming entrepreneurs in the associate member category for 2013  

Published in IamWire Chennai based online bus ticketing platform TicketGoose has raised INR 18 crore in a funding round led by US based Indventure to  scale up its operations, hire talent and enhance customer experience. The company was looking to raise INR 25 crore for the second round of funding since last year. Previously it has raised INR 5 crore in a funding round led by US-based angel investors. However the funding amount of the first round has been speculated by media publications differently between INR 3 – 5 crore. The development was first reported by ET. Launched back in 2007, TicketGoose provides information like price, availability and booking facility for buses. Currently it has a network of 700 bus operators covering 3,000 locations across the country. The portal aggregates over 10,000 routes with 20,000 buses and works with over 6,000 agents. It also has travel insurance policy for accident, baggage damage and medical expense. The company expects to cross the turnover of INR 100 Crore this fiscal. TicketGoose is promoted by Efficsys InfoTech India Pvt. Ltd. and was founded by Karthi Easwaramoorthy along-with his friends Arunkumar Athiappan and Vasudevan Ramasamy. Karthi Easwaramoorthy has previously worked with companies like Oracle and Hewlett-Packard for over 15 years in US. It is based out in Chennai with offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad. A few other dealing in the same space include BusIndia, redBus, Travelyaari, ixigo etc. Recently redBus was acquired by ibiboGroup at an estimated amount of INR 800 crore. Post acquisition redBus had crossed 1 crore ticket sales and had reached a user base of 2 Mn. To contact author, email pooja.sareen@wirefootindia.com  

Published in EconomicTimes   US-based Indventure has invested Rs 18 crore in Chennai’s online bus ticketing company TicketGoose. com. The firm will use the funds to scale up its operations, hire talent and enhance customer experience. “I shopped around in California, Chicago and New York and raised the funding within a month,” said Karthi Easwaramoorthy, president and co-founder of TicketGoose. Last year it raised Rs 5 crore from US-based angel investors. Started by three friends in 2007, the Chennai-based firm has tied up with over 700 bus operators across the nation covering 3,000 destinations. It aggregates over 10,000 routes with 20,000 buses and works with over 6,000 agents. “I wanted to meet my friends in Chennai in 2007, but found it difficult to get a bus ticket in my village near Erode district,” said Easwaramoorthy, who has worked at companies such as Oracle and Hewlett-Packard for over 15 years in US. He launched TicketGoose along with friends Arunkumar Athiappan and Vasudevan Ramasamy. Despite the online bus ticketing market being dominated by players like redBus and MakeMyTrip, Easwarmoorthy said that bus ticketing is a Rs 30,000-crore market. “Around 95% of this market is still untapped.” TicketGoose has also launched a travel insurance policy for accident, baggage damage and medical expense.

Published in Hindu BusinessLine Oct 31, 2013 MUMBAI, OCT. 31 Chennai-based online bus reservation service portal TicketGoose.com, which raised $3 million (around Rs 18 crore) from Indventure, a Chicago-based investor last week, is planning to bring in another $20 million (around Rs 120 crore) next year. The capital raised this month by the Chennai-based start-up, which operates from Bangalore and Hyderabad, is to be used for scaling up operations, increasing workforce and enhancing customer experience. A major chunk would be used to expand into other parts of the country. Co-founder Karthi Easwaramoorthy told Business Line that with the market growing at a steady 30 per cent every year, the company was keen to shore up a sizeable share of the Rs 30,000-crore online bus ticket booking market. “By the year-end, we are expecting to do a Rs 100 crore turnover,” he said. TicketGoose previously raised $1 million (around Rs 6 crore) in 2012, from US-based angel investors. “Our first investment came in from angel investor and former Gums India CEO R. Narayanan, and a group of other investors based in the US. We currently have 20,000 buses and a pan-India presence, and are keen to expand in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and in the western part of Gujarat,” he said. Stating that the online booking market was growing in leaps and bounds due to the penetration of Internet and broadband across the country, Easwaramoorthy said a key differentiator of TicketGoose was the use of its Hipmunk style user interface on the site, “which is designed to appeal visually and keep the text as minimal as possible\’\’. “All rival bus portals like Redbus, Travelyaari, and Abhibus have a text heavy site. The Hipmunk visual representation is a frontrunner in how we show the result to the customer, and the visual reference in the ticket. Hipmunk is unique in the simplicity of the booking process and the visual representations of itinerary details it employs,\’\’ he added. Speaking about the market potential, he added, “Online portals such as ours and Redbus, Travelyaari and Ticketgroup, own less than 5 per cent share of the online segment. Even today, 95 per cent of the market consists of people who buy their tickets in the traditional way. This gives an idea about the high potential and revenue generator of the medium,\’\’ he added. Set up in 2007 by Karthi Easwaramoorthy, Arun Athiappan and Vasudevan Ramasamy, the trio “burnt the initial capital of Rs 30 lakh immediately”. amritanair.ghaswalla@thehindu.co.in

Published in vccircle on 25 October, 2013 Chennai-based Efficsys Infotech India Pvt Ltd that owns and operates the bus ticketing portal TicketGoose.com, has raised $2.9 million (Rs 18 crore) from US-based investor Indventure. The capital raised will be used for scaling up its operations, increasing the workforce and enhancing customer experience. Set up in 2007 by Karthi Easwaramoorthy, Arun Athiappan and Vasu Ramasamy, TicketGoose offers online bus booking facility, as well as information on pricing and availability. It claims to have tied up with over 700 bus operators covering 10,000 routes for 4,500 destinations across southern India. The development was first reported by The Economic Times. This is the startup\’s third round of funding. Last year in October it raised Rs 3 crore from angel investor and former Gums India CEO R Narayanan and a group of other investors based in the US. Before that in July it had raised Rs 4.5 crore from unnamed US-based angel investors. The company had posted a turnover of around Rs 50 crore in FY12 and was targeting Rs 125 crore for FY13. Talking to Techcircle.in last year, Easwaramoorthy, co-founder and director of TicketGoose, said at that time the company was doing 4,000-5,000 ticket bookings a day. He had also stated that though redBus is a market leader, TicketGoose holds a bigger inventory than any other player in Tamil Nadu. Since redBus’ success and its multi-million acquisition (it was bought by Naspers-led MIH Holdings earlier this year) the market has definitely got a huge fillip. Other players in the sector include Paytm and other major OTAs like MakeMyTrip which started offering bus tickets a while ago. (Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)

Published in DtNext on Dec 30,2016 Aiming to disrupt the bus ticketing and transport market with a slew of value added services and differentiating features, Ticketgoose.com, an end to end bus ticketing portal and aggregator, based out of Chennai, is now making its presence felt in a big way in the state. Representative Image Chennai: The company, founded in 2007, has partnered with close to 2,700 bus operators, with 20,000 buses operating as part of their fleet. With as many as five lakh active users and 7,000 agents who use the portal for booking tickets, Ticketgoose.com is now planning to expand its business through various modes. Karthi Easwaramoorthy, President and Co-founder of Ticketgoose.com says, “The Indian travel industry is  growing at the rate of 30 per cent year on year and bus transport services, are a big part of that growth. This year, we have been concentrating more on our bottom line than our top line – by qualitative filtering of our bus operators, rationalising our B2B partners, attracting new customers through innovative e-commerce solutions and products.” Focussing on value-added services, the company has now tied up with bus operators in Tamil Nadu, such as Madurai Radha Travels and Hebron Transport to offer passengers travel options in a Smart Bus. Karthi tells us, “As part of a pilot project, we have equipped a few buses from these operators traversing the Chennai to Bengaluru, Madurai and Coimbatore routes with a Smart Box facility. The system allows passengers to access high quality entertainment, content and high  bandwidth Wi-Fi services on one’s smartphone or tablet itself. It eliminates the need for installing seat-mounted personal screens or a generic single screen inside the bus. We will also be introducing an app shortly, so that Ticketgoose customers can log onto the Smart Box as soon as they enter the bus.” The company is also in discussion with a start-up, assessing the feasibility of developing a bio-toilet solution that can be incorporated into buses. Karthi says, “One of the biggest reasons why buses are only the second most-preferred modes of transportation in India is due to the lack of toilets or even properly maintained restrooms on the highways. It will take the concentrated efforts of both the government and private parties to build the latter. However, we can certainly look into the former aspect and see if it’s a workable solution to install a toilet in a bus, considering the space constraints and other factors.” Diversification is also on the cards for the ticketing aggregator as it is now eyeing the office crowds keen on weekend getaways. “We are now coming up with a new product called Get Together and Get Away (G&G) targeting the millennials – from the age group of 20 to 35. Our product will be similar to that of end to end travel/tour operators, the only difference being our focus on short trips and treks. A lot of corporates have shown a keen interest in this product now.” Talking numbers, Karthi says that company expects to do a turnover of Rs 80 crore this financial year. In the next six months, the portal also plans on adding another 300 bus operators to its network in the East and North Indian sectors. “By mid-2017, we are hopeful of securing a funding worth $10 million, and we are in talks with angel  investors for the same,” he signs off.

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.