Ticketgoose bets big on city

Ticketgoose.com, a leading online bus booking firm, is betting big on the State capital which emerged as a key hub in bus travel space.

According to estimates, the Hyderabad bus market has been growing at 30 per cent a year since 2010 and the city holds promises for higher growth in online booking as the techie population continues to proliferate. Ticketgoose.com has announced commencement of operations in two-tier cities in south and western India including Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.

A study conducted by the portal indicated that there is a high demand for outbound routes from the city to destinations like Bangalore, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur in addition to year round operations to religious places like Tirupati and Shirdi.

There was a gradual shift in passengers’ preference towards more luxury type and a/c buses indicated by the current mix of 30 per cent of super luxury buses like Volvo and Mercedes Benz, 30 per cent for a/c and sleeper buses and the rest being non a/c services.

Online bookings

Ticketgoose.com founder and chief executive officer Arun Athiappan said 15 per cent of the bookings from the city were online, another 40 per cent through agents and the rest through operators. Of those preferring online service, 20 per cent were booking a week in advance, 20 per cent a day in advance and 30 per cent on the day of the journey.

He said the country’s bus travel is expected to grow three-fold to Rs. 45,000 crore by 2015 from the current size of Rs. 15,000 crore. Of this, online booking constituted Rs. 1,500 crore and this space was expected to grow 30 per cent annually.

To keep pace with the growth, the company was expecting to pump in Rs. 25 crore to step up operations by mid next year. This is in addition to Rs. 4 crore seed funding it received from select angel investors of the United States in the first round that closed in August this year.