Case PDF (uploaded seperately) with the detailed study and the presentation wit Redbus.in as an example to study Automation in the Bus Travel Industry.

1. Case Study: RedBus.in –
Automating the Bus Travel Industry
Team Members
Bernard Fernandes (A011)
Joylyn Fernandes (A012)
Shirin Khetani (A063)
Biju Thomas (A051)

2. Case Synopsis
The Bus Travel industry was mainly unorganized with some failed attempts being made at automating it
because of the complexity of the industry
Challenges Faced:
 Volatile demand & huge resources needed to be managed. There are a huge number of bus
operators who have a variety of routes they operate on.
 People reserve bus tickets on the spot mostly after failing to get train seats. Most travelers are the
ones who make last minute plans hence purchase tickets at the bus stand itself.
 Bus reservation more complex than airlines due to number of stops. Buses travelling between
certain cities may still have different boarding points.
 Target Customer group is different from airline TG. They may not be computer literate may not own
a credit card or be hesitant to make purchases online. The customers are mostly of the lower
income group and could only be looking for deals & finally end up making the purchase at the travel
agency.
Accepting the challenge would mean:
 Automation would help in easing the process of reservations & bus driver allocations
 Higher efficiency would reduce operation costs & also improve customer experience.
 Reduce the number of near empty buses. Making the inventory available online with all the
information like routes/prices etc would attract more customers.
 Customer data would help decide when/where to reduce prices
Challenge Accepted:
 RedBus founders mimic the bus operators operations in the backend. Create a website
functioning like a travel agent where they reserve 20% of the inventory & make it available
online.
 Information like Departure points in a city/Route info/Ticket rates helps rake in more customers
thus reducing the operation of buses at an empty rate.
 Phone booking or through partner outlets / retail outlets/cyber café tie ups helps tap in
customers who are not comfortable with online reservations.
 Cash On delivery offered where the nearest RedBus representative would book the ticket on his
mobile & hand over a hand written ticket to the customer.
 BPOs deployed in every office location to improve customer services
 Tie ups with mobile platforms like Ngpay & mcheck for booking via mobiles
 Host data on cloud helped with improving site performance & handling heavy traffic (Amazon
Web Services)
 Plans on to implement CRM & ERP solutions

3. Question 1.(i)
Use the Competitive Force Models to Analyze the Bus Industry Online Reservation Situation.
Threat of New Entrants [LOW]
 Easy entry for new players as it is an internet based industry
 Has the first entrant advantage
Rivalry Among existing Firms [MEDIUM]
 Existing firms who could go big in the bus reservation service
 People tend to depend on agents for a personalized service
Determinants of Buyer Power
 Customers looking for bargains
 Low Product Differentiation
Determinants of Supplier Power[MEDIUM]
 Operators depend on RedBus.in to bring in customers
Threat of Substitutes[HIGH]
 Offline reservation/ Travel agents who offer better deals
 On the spot reservation at the bus stands
Question 1. (ii)
What Competitive forces did the bus operators have to deal with?
Competitors include existing travel reservations sites like:
 Makemytrip.com
 Cleartrip.com
 Travelyaari.com
 Yatra.com
 Goibo.com
Travel Agents also act as a huge competition to RedBus.in
Question 1 (iii)
What kinds of Strategic Information Systems this industry needs?
RedBus & similar portals could benefit from the CRMsoftware : To manage customer data
 Offer coupons to nudge repeat purchases of tickets
 Manage customer preferences like timings, routes, operators, price preferences

4. Question 2
How much strategic advantage would Redbus solution have provided to the bus operators?
Improved Efficiency:
 Improve the efficiency thus save time & costs
 Preparation of more effective time-tables for the buses, drivers and related staff according to
demand, trends, seasons and customer requirements.
 Easier plotting of longer bus journeys, which may involve break journey or change of buses or
operators to reach a destination.
Increased Sales
 Increase the bookings thus avoiding the departing of near empty buses
 Convenience to the customer in booking, organising the journey and hence increase in business.
 Wider reach to a larger customer base
Customer Relationship Management
 The bus operators would also have a better idea of the preferences of the customers, the most
travelled routes, most preferred price points thus could improve in those areas.
 Possibility to take feedback from the customer about the various aspects of the travel.
Organization of the Sector
 Redbus would also mean the organization of the bus travel sector thus operators would have a
better sense of what competitors are doing thus enhance standards w.r.t pricing/driver allotments
& maybe implementation of better safety policies.

5. Question 3
What Management, Organization & Technology factors contributed to the success of the Redbus
business model?
Management factors:
 The founders were from an IT background.
 They met up with various people from the industry-bus operators, customers, venture capitalists to
understand how the concept would work.
 They researched the industry by meeting with bus operators, customers & venture capitalists to
understand how well the concept would work.
 To convince bus operators it acted like an agent by blocking inventory & making it available online.
Organization Factors:
 Grown strategically by opening up offices in 6 metros
 It has also partnered up with 300 bus operators & has operations in 15 states across 400 locations
 Today it has a huge distribution network of over 35000 outlets
 BPOs established for better customer experience
Technology Factors:
 RedBus offered customers the ease of booking bus tickets online & had the early entrant advantage
in this case.
 Offering COD to customers who are not comfortable paying online. Customer has to call the
company’s call center.
 Interface with other online portals like Makemytrip.com, yatra.com , Cleartrip.com, Easygo.com &
Thomas Cook
 Services on mobile platforms like Ngpay & mCheck.
 Offices connected via VPN networks at a centrally hosted server
 Moving to the Cloud improved efficiency as it could handle increased traffic to the site.