Chennai-based Efficsys Infotech India Pvt Ltd that owns and operates the bus ticketing portal TicketGoose.com, has raised $2.9 million (Rs 18 crore) from US-based investor Indventure. The capital raised will be used for scaling up its operations, increasing the workforce and enhancing customer experience.
Set up in 2007 by Karthi Easwaramoorthy, Arun Athiappan and Vasu Ramasamy, TicketGoose offers online bus booking facility, as well as information on pricing and availability. It claims to have tied up with over 700 bus operators covering 10,000 routes for 4,500 destinations across southern India. The development was first reported by The Economic Times.
This is the startup's third round of funding. Last year in October it raised Rs 3 crore from angel investor and former Gums India CEO R Narayanan and a group of other investors based in the US. Before that in July it had raised Rs 4.5 crore from unnamed US-based angel investors. The company had posted a turnover of around Rs 50 crore in FY12 and was targeting Rs 125 crore for FY13.
Talking to Techcircle.in last year, Easwaramoorthy, co-founder and director of TicketGoose, said at that time the company was doing 4,000-5,000 ticket bookings a day. He had also stated that though redBus is a market leader, TicketGoose holds a bigger inventory than any other player in Tamil Nadu. Since redBus’ success and its multi-million acquisition (it was bought by Naspers-led MIH Holdings earlier this year) the market has definitely got a huge fillip. Other players in the sector include Paytm and other major OTAs like MakeMyTrip which started offering bus tickets a while ago.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
