RedBus.in-AN INTRODUCTION
RedBus.in is an e-commerce website offering online bus ticket facility in India. It was founded in 2006 by Phanindra Sama, Sudhakar Pasupunuri and Charan Padmaraju- all engineers by qualification who quit their jobs and took the entrepreneurial route. From a few seats and only a single bus operator during its beginning, RedBus.in has grown exponentially and has revenues of over 600 million INR (March 2013). It has sold over 3 crore bus tickets and has 1800 plus bus operators plying on 67000 plus routes. The growth story seems even more incredible when we factor in that it has done so with minimal amount spent on advertising. It is amongst the most successful e-commerce websites offering online bus tickets and still…show more content… This problem can be described in a slightly more technical way as the problem of the Missing Supply Curve. Without going into too many complexities let us delve into this just a little bit to get a sense of the implications of what happens when a market, any market, faces this problem of a Missing Supply Curve.
As anyone familiar with even school level economics would know the forces of supply and demand determine prices in any market. In our case we are talking about the market for bus seats. Economists routinely use demand curves and supply curves to describe the behavior of markets. The demand curve is the graph depicting the relationship between the price of a certain commodity and the amount of it that consumers are willing and able to purchase at that given price. It is a graphic representation of a demand schedule which is a list of how much a customer would be willing to buy at any given price. The demand curve for all consumers together follows from the demand curve of every individual consumer: the individual demands at each price are added…show more content… The present penetration of online ticket booking for bus travel is 10% compared to nearly 30% in flights. This presents an exciting and challenging opportunity for RedBus to acquire new users. The online ticket booking has also received a shot in the arm with the burgeoning number of smart phone users and increased penetration of internet in India. The market leader ought to take the lead in expanding the market for online bus ticket booking. Coupled with the expertise of ibibo Group, RedBus.in has the potential to become one stop solution to travel