Bookmyshow

BookMyShow is India's biggest online movie and events ticketing brand. The website caters to ticket sales for movies, plays, concerts and sporting events via the online platform. Launched in 1999, it is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It also has offices in New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. BookMyShow reaches about 800 to 900 cinemas in 200 cities and towns. About 60 percent of its transactions take place via its mobile app which, say experts, is the most successful mobile ecommerce app in the country.^[1]

Early history

BookMyShow part of Bigtree Entertainment was founded by Ashish Hemrajani, Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande, in 1999, all three alumni of Sydenham Institute of Management, Mumbai University after the trio took a vacation in South Africa. They had been working for J.W. Thompson, SPAR and Chatterjee Soros Group, respectively.Bigtree started by selling a ticket software called Vista made by a New Zealand-based company to multiplexes that were coming up at that time. In 2007 they officially came up with the BookMyShow website. The major purpose of this start-up was to bring the concept of online movie ticketing to India. And soon as it expanded, it started offering online ticketing solutions for theatres, events, concerts and sports.

During its initial years, BookMyShow had a small team managing all the operations. It now employs more than 400 people.^[2] BookMyShow's online ticketing platform is considered to be the main reason behind its success.

Services

BookMyShow is an online ticketing facility like Movietickets.com and Ticketmaster.com. BookMyShow took the primary services provided by these two websites and consolidated it into one website for movies, plays, events and sports tickets. Apart from being an online ticketing portal, BookMyShow offers information about upcoming movies and events, show timings, venue details and artist bios.BookMyShow occupies 85 to 90 percent of the online entertainment-ticketing market; 70 percent of its sales comes from movie tickets and the remaining from sports, plays and live events. At present, sports accounts for almost 20 percent of its revenues and is seen as a future growth area. ^[1] The website gets 1 billion page views, 50 million visits, it sells 6 million (60 lakh) tickets a month and has sold $269.7 million (Rs.1,700 crore) worth of tickets as of March 2015.^[3]

Funding & Company Valuation

Soon after BookMyShow was launched, the company was invested in by Network18 which marked the company's first round of funding in 2007. In August 2012, Accel Partners invested USD 18 million in BookMyShow and Network18 reduced it's stake to 40%. After this investment the company valuation stood at USD 58.33 million. Accel Partners are global equity investors who have invested in companies including Facebook, Dropbox and Flipkart.

In June 2014, BookMyShow announced that it has raised USD 25 million from SAIF Partners, another global equity investor. The recent investment marks a quantum leap to a valuation of USD166.67 million from USD 58.33 million, previously raised in 2012.^[4] SAIF Partners have also funded ventures including Justdial.com and Makemytrip.com. It will use the funds to hire talent and focus on growing business in smaller towns and cities, where it plans to sign on single-screen cinemas and events. A significant portion of the funding will also be used to build technologies around mobile payments and applications.^[5]

Bigtree's 2014-15 revenues stood at Rs 127.6 crore showing a growth of 51 % Y-O-Y, with a net loss of Rs 13.5 crore. It's value of ticket sales was around Rs 1,000 crore.^[6]

Acquisitions

• March, 2013: TicketGreen, a Chennai-based online ticketing company.^[7]
• January 2015: BookMyShow’s parent company BigTree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd acquired a majority stake in the social media analytics start-up, Eventifier. Located in Bengaluru, Eventifier was acquired to leverage social media for BookMyShow’s listed events.^[8]

News

• China’s Baidu may enter India; talks with Zomato, Bookmyshow, BigBasket^[9]

References

1. ↑ "10 sharply focussed ecommerce players in India". http://forbesindia.com/. Forbes India.  External link in |website= (help)
2. ↑ Meghna, Maiti. "The Perfect Script". http://www.outlookbusiness.com.  External link in |website= (help)
3. ↑ "Goafest 2015: There'll be a bubble burst in e-commerce industry in 12-18 months: Ashish Hemrajani". http://www.exchange4media.com/. Exchange 4 Media.  External link in |website= (help)
4. ↑ "BookMyShow in Rs 1,000 crore club with new funding". http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/. The Economic Times.  External link in |website= (help)
5. ↑ "BookMyShow in Rs 1,000 crore club with new funding". http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/. The Economic Times. Retrieved 2015-09-09.  External link in |website= (help)
6. ↑ http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/is-an-online-ticketing-aggregator-bookmyshow-an-ecommerce-model-like-no-other/articleshow/50788409.cms
7. ↑ "BookMyShow buys Ticketgreen". http://www.thehindu.com/. The Hindu.  External link in |website= (help)
8. ↑ "Bookmyshow buys majority stake in Eventifier for $2 million". http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/. The Economic Times.  External link in |website= (help)
9. ↑ "China’s Baidu may enter India; talks with Zomato, Bookmyshow, BigBasket". Vasopedia India.