TicketGoose gets Rs 18 crore funding from US-based Indventure
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.