Adgully Exclusive | On a mission to eliminate queue for booking movie tickets: Bookmyshow's Ashish Hemrajani

When was the last time you stood in the queue to book a ticket for a movie? As the level of internet penetration gets higher, e-ticketing is fast becoming the way of life. Also with people increasingly owning a mobile and accessing the net, booking a ticket for the latest movie will never have any hindrance. Almost twelve years ago, with great foresight, a company called Bookmyshow.com was born.

Talking exclusively to Adgully, Ashish Hemrajani, Founder and CEO, Bookmyshow discusses the journey so far among many other things.

Staying true to its brand proposition, even the business cards of the company are designed like tickets. This gets the attention of other people and is something that stays in one's mind for a long time.

"Cards as tickets even you know way back since 2000 I think even at that when our brand was something else we used to tear tickets and give it out to people. Also it's a cost saving tool because we used our paper we have for our blank stock for various tickets and we used that same and made visiting card of that. So, it works well for because it saves money and it's a pretty cool idea," Hemrajani explained.

The whole concept for such a business came about from the fact that there was a time once when people would wait in long queues to pay for a movie ticket and also black market was rampant then.

Hemrajani further added, "I thought the whole idea has to be that you have to be democratic with the way information flows. We have to be democratic with the people who buy tickets. Leave the choice up to the person whether he wants to buy it or not. Now you can go online, you can see one theatre verses another, you can see what tickets are available and are not available, whether he wants to pay for it or doesn't want to pay for it!"

Talking about the journey of the company and the kind of setbacks faced, Hemrajani elaborated, "Loose ends in 1999 were very different as compared to today. We have got the scale, numbers, customers, all the technology things, effects; we have got everybody coming on board, millions of tickets being sold on yearly basis. But the challenges today are different like what is it that we can give the customer more, how can we improve us, how can we simplify his experience. These are the loose ends we are trying to tap today."

He further spoke about how Bookymyshow.com takes special efforts to understand their consumers well. All their needs and wants are catered to. "We have a lot of users that have come, a large number of these are repeat users. So, we obviously are doing something right as we take our consumers extremely seriously. So, if you write to us on a Sunday and say,' Hey you have got an issue', I will guarantee you that our customer support team, which is a pretty large team in another office will touch base with you and whether it's on twitter, face book or call you back or on the web and sort your issue out," Hemrajani said with conviction.

According to Hemrajani, there is a long way to go in this space as he discusses the size of this space, "In India there are 3. 5Billion people who go to the movie every year, which is all of Africa, America, Middle East and Europe put together. But that's about 3.5 times per person that goes and watches movies as billion is our population. As oppose to eight times per person in the US. That's where we understand that there is a long way to go."

The company has plans of expanding to cities like Hyderabad and Mangalore and Pune. "We have seen great interest from Varanasi , Jaipur , Aagra. So, we are moving. We have ticket sells in Vellore as well. We have close to 60 cities we are counting on. Eventually the market will expand," he stated.

Talking more about its business model, Hemrajani further explained, "We follow two types of revenue models. One is for movies and plays for which we charge the consumers for convenience of dropping the movie ticket. As far as IPL, concerts, some of the larger events, it's the event organizer who pays us. So, there is MRP of the price on the ticket and they pay us a fee for managing the entire tickets."

The company also as many deals such as hospitality deals and corporate deals. "We have got two types of tickets- general ticket and a hospitality tickets. General tickets are which you buy. Hospitality tickets are all which include S&D services, certain specialized services, hostesses, taken to your seat, branding of your seat, customization, merchandise etc. so within these two types you have got bulk sales," he explained.

With various customized offerings, Bookmyshow has a definite focus on consumers. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]