Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 4)

Sramana: After you had talked with bus operators and travel agents, what was your next step?

Phanindra Sama: I thought about the problem and then how to create the solution. On the software side, I knew there would be various different types of people accessing the system and it had to be done by a third party. There would be a travel agent’s representative and a bus operators representative. It was complex technology because the entire industry would eventually rely on this system. The software had to be robust and scalable.

I never had any intentions of getting into the software business. Previously I had thought that if I did something entrepreneurial that it would focus on microchip design. That was my background and that is where I had all of my experience. I had spent so long reading up on electronics that I did not want to let it go.

Over that long weekend, I had four days all alone. I sat down and wrote a note to all of my classmates who were also my roommates. I explained the reason that I did not go home, and what research I had done in terms of talking to the travel agents and the bus operators. I explained that we should create some technology and give it to this industry, and we could also make some money. I wrote my message to all six of my roommates. I did not look at them individually and try to figure out who would be a good co-founder.

I explained what I felt was a possible solution in that note, but that we should implement the solution as a non-profit organization. The money earned would be done so by a non-profit organization and that we would not get involved or do the coding work. We would just get developers from the local area to contribute to an open source technology project. At that point, that was the only model I could think of for that idea.

Sramana: Were all six of your friends from a microelectronics background, or did any of them have a software background?

Phanindra Sama: They all had different backgrounds. One was from software, one worked with embedded systems, and another with application software. Interestingly enough, none of them were involved with Web technologies. In those days there were not a lot of companies working on the web.

When my friends came back they were excited. They wanted to create something, and none of us were thinking about leaving our jobs. We figured we would spend a weekend making it and then like the other projects we would put it on a server and invite the world to contribute to it.

Sramana: Did all six of you decide to undertake the endeavor together?

Phanindra Sama: Yes, and including me there were seven of us.

Sramana: The seven of you were doing it only on the weekends?

Phanindra Sama: Exactly. We all lived together, so it would make it easy to work on it that way.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12