Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 9)

Sramana: How many customers does redBus have today? Phanindra Sama: We sell about 200,000 seats per month at this point. Sramana: How many seats were you selling when you met the journalist? Phanindra Sama: At that time we were selling 10 to 15 seats per month. It was enough to keep our allocations from the

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 7)

Sramana: How far were you able to bootstrap your company while maintaining your job? Phanindra Sama: The product was completed and ready. To solve this problem, the logical process was to give the software to bus operators.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 6)

Sramana: Did you keep your jobs the entire time? Phanindra Sama: Yes, we did keep our jobs. One member of our team did the majority of the work developing the technology. Randomly he stopped going to the office because he was so obsessed with building the software.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 5)

Sramana: What was the next step in the development of redBus? Phanindra Sama: We split up our work. When it came to creating the technology, we realized that none of us knew the technology. We did not know databases, Java, or any of the core aspects of building a Web application.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 4)

Sramana: After you had talked with bus operators and travel agents, what was your next step? Phanindra Sama: I thought about the problem and then how to create the solution. On the software side, I knew there would be various different types of people accessing the system and it had to be done by a

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 3)

Sramana: You identified a significant number of problems in bus travel. Which problem did you think was the biggest? Phanindra Sama: The biggest problem of all was that people could not buy return tickets. Every time I arranged a bus to visit my parents I had to call them and have them book a return

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 2)

Sramana: What led you to leave a job that you loved at TI to start redBus? Phanindra Sama: One holiday in 2005 I planned my trip home to see my parents very late because I had been busy with work. I was very accustomed to traveling by bus, and I used to take several buses

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Phanindra Sama, otherwise known as Phani, is the co-founder and CEO of redBus. redBus is India’s largest bus ticketing company and a Forbes Top 5 Startup in 2010. Phani has a BE in electrical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Prior to founding redBus,

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