Ticket to ride on India's buses

The redBus website started with three co-founders and grew into a team of 50 within 9 months. It currently employs more than 4000 people all over India.

 

What makes an entrepreneur? The BBC's Parul Agrawal and Tom Santorelli spoke to Charan Padmaraju about how he and his friends set up India's first organised bus ticket booking service after one of them struggled to secure a ticket home for the festival of Diwali.

In 2005 Phanindra Sama was frantically running around Bangalore hunting for a last-minute bus ticket to take him back home for the festival of Diwali.

Despite calling travel agents and weaving through the city's notorious traffic, he failed to secure a ride and, admitting defeat, sloped back to his flat.

He wondered why there was no centralised booking system for bus tickets in India when plane and train bookings were so well catered for.

The redBus website covers over 4500 routes across India

 

It sounded obvious to him.

He talked to his friends from the BITS Pilani engineering college, Sudhakar Pasupunuri and Charan Padamraju, and they brainstormed an idea.

Their website, redBus.in, would be a way of providing consumers the convenience of booking a bus ticket over the internet without having to leave the confines of their own homes.

The team of three all resigned from their well-paid and secure jobs and by August 2006 the website was up and running.

Two of the site's co-founders, Charan Padmaraju and Phanindra Sama

 

Internet penetration was spreading in urban areas and inroads were being made in rural India too. Charan knew this would be vital tool for them but he had to get the bus companies on board as online facilities were still considered to be unreliable and cumbersome: "The internet was new and especially for many of the bus operators they never felt could actually work, there would be a lot of loop-holes in it and they didn't really want to try it."

With hundreds of bus operators of various degrees of computerisation and automation, the challenge was to integrate their schedules into one centralised system. Charan started writing the code: "We created software for the bus drivers so they can log in and create their schedules and make it available for distribution", he says.

Next the co-founders had to change the mindset of a public used to traditional bricks and mortars travel agents. They distributed pamphlets for redBus at busy traffic intersections and bus stations. Slowly but surely word of mouth grew and traffic to the site started to increase.

Customers can chose from a range of travel options, even down to where they want to sit

 

What started as a team of three grew into a team of 50 within 9 months and currently they have more than 4000 employees all over India, dealing with 10,000 bus schedules a day.

Customers can chose from an option of over 4500 routes across India, picking their tickets up from thousands of outlets across the land or having them delivered to their home. "For a passenger that wants to travel from A to B, he can choose the right bus, the right time, right pick-up point and then make his choice even to the extent of picking his seat. He can do all this through his mobile, through his computer, he needn't go out into the market searching for a travel agent."

Even though the co-founders are keen to adopt the latest technological developments such as cloud -computing, they understand that not everyone in India has access to the internet - and some people feel uncomfortable making financial transactions online: "We have other sales channels, one is cash on delivery, where any customer can call a given number and we book a ticket and deliver it to his home and collect cash on delivery."

Co-founder Phanindra Sama thinks India is the ideal place for entrepreneurs right now: "I was recently touring some of the South-Asian countries and I see a big, big difference between the start-ups there and the start-ups here…the start-up founders are made heroes here, which actually exhilarates more and more people to get into entrepreneurship".

Other online bus ticketing sites have sprung up in redBus's wake, like Ticketvala and Travel Yaari, but Charan is proud that his company was the first to come up with the idea five years ago: "Five years is a long time. We never know where we'll be in the next five years. But we would definitely want to take our services deeper into the country, cover the complete geography - and also look at similar markets internationally where we can add value and create new markets."

 

Source of Inspiration...

Reid Hoffman

Co-Founder and Executive Chairman,

LinkedIn (Since 2003)

“Build a compact piece of work with the right leverage, and you can solve a very big problem”

“When you write a scholarly work, it tends to be understood by very few people, and has one publication point over time,” he said. “But when you build a service, you can touch millions, to hundreds of millions of people directly”

“Data will be foundational in the next wave of mass applications that go to hundreds of millions of people”

Reid Hoffman is a leading modern pioneering entrepreneur of 21st century and an angel investor (he has invested in some 114 tech startups since 1995, including juggernauts like Facebook, Flickr, Groupon and Zynga, both on his own and as a partner in the venture firm Greylock Partners). He is a creator of strategic products and organizations that would help the society to explore and adapt themselves to the changes in the future business arena. He had deeper insights of global financial structures and models, latest technology and a sharp acute vision to achieve synchronization between them. He became the major voice and navigator for the entrepreneurship, after he co-founded and took up the responsibility as Executive Chairman of LinkedIn, the most popular and the world’s largest professional networking site in the year 2003.

Reid Hoffman strongly believes that knowledge sharing through professional networks is one of the best ways of learning. This belief resulted in starting of LinkedIn. Under the strong leadership and vision of Hoffman, the company spread its wings and is serving more than 100 million users (44 million from U.S and 56 million from outside U.S), with the help of 1,700 employees, across 200 countries around the world, with a market capitalization of about 7.9 billion dollars as of now. The revenue comes from diversified areas of operations such as subscriptions, advertising, and software licensing. The company went public 8 months ago and the stock price of the company nearly doubled. This fastest growing revolutionary professional networking site allows its registered members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients. Your professional network is how you stay competitive as a professional: sharing tips on work practices, benchmarks and key tools. Your professional network is how you stay up to date on your industry: key trends, information and transformations. Your professional network is how you get the best opportunities: a job, a client, a consulting contract, or other business connections. LinkedIn helps you collaborate with your network on productivity, information and success. LinkedIn differs from other fun based social networking sites, as it takes control of your economic destiny and improves the way you operate as a professional and how you can develop a competitive advantage. These are fundamentals for achieving quality of life. Individuals can create their own professional profile that can be viewed by others in their network, and view the profiles of their own contacts thus changing the lives of millions of people. This was all possible due to the envisioned dream of an entrepreneur to connect millions of people to share professional knowledge. Reid Hoffman stands exemplary and inspires many upcoming entrepreneurs. LinkedIn winning two Webby awards in 2007 for services and social networking is a milestone of Reid’s success as an entrepreneur. On philanthropic front, Hoffman serves on the boards of social organizations, Kiva.org, micro-lending platform, hybrid infrastructure organizations such as Mozilla or Creative Commons and Endeavor Global, an international non-profit development organization that finds and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Educational and Career Outlook Before finding LinkedIn, Little Reid was a Californian kid who was fond of playing games. In spite of scoring B’s and C’s in middle school, Reid was a highly focused and bright kid. He attended his high school at “The Putney School”. Reid Hoffman graduated in symbolic systems, the study of relationship between computing and human intelligence, with distinction, in 1990, from Stanford University. Reid took his masters in Philosophy in the year 1993 from Oxford University and he was winner of Marshall Scholarship. Reid Hoffman’s graduation from Stanford in 1990
After his Masters, Reid had a gut feeling that “Social Media” going to be monumental in future as many social networks including gaming companies had social media as their soul for operations. As a part of his checklist to start, he joined in Apple and kick started his career as a pure software developer. Later he went to Fujitsu for product management and the business side. In the summer months of 1997, he forayed into social media by starting a company called “Social Net”, which mainly laid its focus on online dating and matching up people with similar interests, but ended up as a flop company.
By the flop of Social Net, Reid was a bit frustrated. However, soon he realized that a product or a service should have a potential to touch millions of people. With the lesson learnt, Reid left Social Net in 1999 and joined Mr.Thiel at PayPal. Thiel was also co-student and his friend at Stanford. At that point of time, PayPal was struggling through many challenges regarding Visa and Master Cards. Reid Hoffman took up the responsibility of Executive Vice President of PayPal and turned around the company. His key role was to manage external relations of the company. He was jam packed with meetings to manage all business relationships such as business development, corporate development, international, government relations, and banking/payments infrastructure etc. He managed to convince and persuade credit card companies and regulators. He evolved as a strong and higher order strategist and a great connector at PayPal. PayPal survived and went public in 2002, making Reid and many of his colleagues multimillionaires. During his stance at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental in acquisition by eBay and was responsible partnerships with Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid Hoffman and his PayPal counterparts make millions selling to eBay in 2002
Reid started LinkedIn in 2003 and in spite of boom in social networking, at the beginning, it was not very clear that LinkedIn would survive. The response for the first year was dismal. At that time, Friendster was the most popular social network and LinkedIn was the first of the kind of site based on business and professional connections and looked faded. Reid steered the company towards profits with unwaivered determination after a long struggle of 5 years. Sequoia Capital, an early backer of Google, invested $4.7 million in LinkedIn in the year 2003 and one of its partners, Mark Kvamme, joined the board of LinkedIn.
Things took different turns, Kvamme and Reid had some debate of thoughts and relationships got disturbed. Reid was a person who was least bothered about corporate spending and margins and viewed the world in a broader perspective. In 2008, as the economy of the world was badly affected, more people joined LinkedIn for its premium job and recruiting services. Mr. Hoffman led the company as the Executive Chairman and focused on his strengths like product and high-level strategy. It also helped him to accept a job at Greylock. Even today, Reid invests his time between Greylock’s offices on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California and LinkedIn’s headquarters at Mountain View.  He feels that a new Web is stirring and social media redefined the Internet and there is another paradigm shift. Hoffman believes that 21st century would be pivotal on data and works on manipulating data in various interesting ways and mostly invests in data-driven companies. LinkedIn, too, has been trying to leverage the data on its site by, for example, making it more searchable, data-intensive, straightforward and useful. Reid joined Greylock Partners in 2009. His areas of focus include consumer Internet, enterprise 2.0, mobile, social gaming, online marketplaces, payments and social networks. Reid is passionate to work with products that can reach hundreds of millions of participants and businesses that have network effects. Reid also has held management roles in significant technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. In addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves on the Board of Directors for SixApart, Kiva.org, and Mozilla Corporation.
More about Reid Hoffman Born Reid Hoffman August 5, 1967(age 44) Stanford, California, U.S. Country of Citizenship United States Alma mater Stanford University, B.S degree in Symbolic Systems  Oxford University, Masters in Philosophy Occupation Entrepreneur and investor
Young Reid with his Father
	The great American entrepreneur and venture capitalist was born in Stanford, California, on August 5, 1967. He was brought up in Berkeley, California. Reid’s father, William Hoffman, recalls that he used to read a book for young Reid during bedtime, when he was five and whenever he picked the book, the bookmark moved further and further ahead faster. Reid had a great obsession and indulgence for games; specifically he was fascinated with multiplayer game mechanics and the way that social systems come together. Young Reid at the age of 12, arrived unannounced one Friday at offices of Chaosium, the game maker behind RuneQuest, the fantasy role-playing game first published in 1978. He marked his suggestions in the game manual with red ink and put it in the hands of game developer. The man who went through the suggestions of young Reid was impressed and asked him if he wants to do anything else. Reid told he wanted to work and reported at work the immediate Monday and received his first paycheck of $127, a few weeks later.
Awards and Honors Reid Hoffman deserves to be honored for bringing perfect blend of talents and vision to Silicon Valley and the world of the internet, creating off-the-charts success.
Reid Hoffman has been named, the Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year 2011. Reid Hoffman receives VC Taskforce’s 2011 Innovation Catalyst Award. The 2011 Endeavor Gala honored Reid Hoffman, Founder & Chairman, LinkedIn, for   his high-impact entrepreneurship. In 2010, Reid was the recipient of an SD Forum Visionary Award. In 2010, Reid was named, a Henry Crown Fellow by The Aspen Institute. Tech America’s highest award, the David Packard Medal of Achievement, named   Reid Hoffman as Entrepreneur of the year for 2010.
Reid Hoffman’s ten rules of Entrepreneurship LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman spells some golden words about how entrepreneurs can “invent the future”. He tells the 10 commandments of entrepreneurship, which may have a little change according to the change in time and technology, at present these rules hold good for entrepreneurs. Try to create “disruptive change” “It’s got to be something that changes an industry.” As one rule-of-thumb on how to judge whether your idea is disruptive enough, Hoffman said it should take $10 revenue and replace it with $1 of revenue, because that’s creating opportunities for new ecosystems. “Aim big”  Hoffman argued that it usually takes the same amount of work to run a small company as it does a big company (except that if you sell the small company early, the work ends sooner). With that in mind, he said entrepreneurs try to build big companies that revolutionize their industry rather than create a startup they “flip” after a couple of years.  Build a network to amplify your company  That network includes investors, advisors, employees, customers, and others. “Plan for good luck”  Sometimes entrepreneurs are surprised when something good happens, and they must take advantage of it by changing their plans. For example, he noted that PayPal (where he worked) started as an encryption product on mobile phones and then pivoted to a number of other products before the founders noticed that it was being widely used at eBay. At first, the team wondered, “Why are these eBay people using us? This is terrible,” then they realized that PayPal could become a payment tool for online merchants. “Maintain flexible persistence”  “The art is knowing when to be persistent and when to be flexible and how to blend them.” “Launch early enough that you’re embarrassed by your 1.0 product release.”  Hoffman said that “unless you’re Steve Jobs,” entrepreneurs are probably at least partially wrong about their product, and they won’t find out what they’re wrong about until people are using it. He added that when he launched LinkedIn, his co-founders wanted to wait until they launched the “contact finder” feature, but it turns out that wasn’t necessary. LinkedIn still hasn’t added that feature eight years later. “Always keep your aspirations and aim high, but don’t drink your own Kool Aid.” “Having a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.” “Pay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.” “These rules of entrepreneurship are not laws of nature. You can break them.” -After all, the nature of entrepreneurship is that you’re doing something for the first time.   Inspiring quotes by Reid Hoffman “People will be discovering that the Internet helps their career. One of my theses is that every individual is now a small business; how you manage, your own personal career is the exact way you manage a small business. Your brand matters. That is how LinkedIn operate” “Try to get as much intelligence as you can from your network on both the entrepreneurial process and the specifics of the business that you're thinking about. The network is not just the people you know -- it's whom your network knows. Iterate constantly” “Entrepreneurship and innovation is how we change the world” “A networker likes to meet people. I don't. I like accomplishing things in the world. You meet people when you want to accomplish something” “Entrepreneurship is throwing yourself off a cliff and building a plane on the way down” “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” “Be persistent and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible” “The value of being connected and transparent is so high that the road bumps of privacy issues are much lower in actual experience than people’s fears”

 

The Days of "Manager Knows Best" Are Ending

To get a glimpse of what tomorrow's young global managers might be like as leaders, take a look at how today's young people think about communications.

For one thing, they are devoted to connectivity. In a recentsurvey of more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries, Cisco found that more than half said they could not live without the internet, and if forced to choose, two-thirds would opt to have an internet rather than a car. This intense desire to be connected leads to a demand for greater flexibility: Two out of five people said they'd accept a lower-paying job if the position offered greater flexibility on access to social media, the ability to work from where they chose, and choice on the mobile devices they could use on the job. Tomorrow's young managers will share these attitudes, and workplaces will inevitably become more flexible.

For another thing, social media is quickly overtaking phones and email and becoming the dominant form of communication. Young people are driving this change, with the one-to-one mode of interacting giving way to a one-to-many mind-set. Young leaders will use social media to create a running dialog with their employees and colleagues, issuing constant updates about their projects and ideas. Employees will use it to provide instantaneous input and feedback. Workers, via this medium, will insist on having a voice in shaping the company's vision and strategy.

The demand for increased connectivity and flexibility and greater use of social media will shape and change companies from the inside out. Companies will need to think hard about these questions:

·         What is the appropriate level of openness? Should employees be prevented from slamming their bosses' ideas, for example? Should managers be restricted in the kinds of things they can say to or about employees?

·         How much blurring of public and private life is too much? Social media encourages people to mix work- and nonwork-related communication, but some workers prefer to keep their social lives strictly off-limits.

·         How can the company prevent abuse of social media? Things can get ugly quickly — all it takes is one thoughtless comment. Employees and managers need to know that there will be serious consequences for any misuse of this potentially combustible form of communication.

·         When employees from VPs to interns are sharing company information on Twitter, on Facebook, and in blogs while your competition is watching, how do you ensure that your employees understand what information is confidential and what is public?

As companies resolve these issues, management styles will evolve. The days when a leader can confidently say "I know best" will come to an end. Managers will no longer be able to communicate with just a small circle of trusted advisers — they'll be expected to interact digitally with a much broader range of people both inside and outside the company.

Not every company will be pleased by this turn of events, of course, but those that embrace it will have new competitive opportunities. With knowledge flowing more freely throughout the organization and decisions being made more quickly, the company will be able to react more nimbly to the ever-increasing pace of change.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center, The Next Generation of Global Leaders.

 

Happy Republic Day.

 

Wish You All A Happy Makar Sankranti-Pongal..!!!