Indya.com looks to boost revenues by 10 percent from Indya Tickets

Indya.com, a company of the Star Group that provides Internet-based communications, entertainment and e-commerce, has announced that it expects to earn 10 percent of its revenues from its new business foray—Indya Tickets.com. The company plans to increase its revenues further by providing value-added services. Through its solution one can book movie tickets, plays, sports live and entertainment show by making a phone or Internet or through Internet Kiosks across six cities in India-Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad with a service rates ranging from Rs 10 to 15.

According to Alok Sethi, CEO, Indya Tickets, “As per FICCI report the entertainment sector is worth Rs 125 billion and expected to grow to Rs 300 billion by the year 2005. Being early movers into this space it will help us in gaining market share.” To get a major pie of the market share, the company has picked up a 68 percent stake in Bigtree Interactive Ticketing, which was born by merging two companies—Bigtree Entertainment and Interactive Television’s online ticketing business. “We bring value proposition for the industry by increasing their tickets sales for cinema halls and films distributors,” added Alok.

Indya Tick-ets so far has invested Rs five crore in technology and setting up the infrastructure that consists of six call centres in six cities and 14 kiosk in Mumbai. The company plans to expand its offering for the entertainment sector. “We are talking to mobile service provide for a possible tie-up so that one can book tickets through SMS and Instant messenger.” Instant messenger will be developed by the company itself. Indya tickets is also planning to introduce pre-paid cards for online as well as offline payments. We receive over 10,000 calls over phone for movie tickets but with increasing PC penetration we expects sales to pick up for online booking and Internet Kiosks. We plan to start Internet booking and kiosks booking in cities like Delhi and Bangalore in a month’s time. Currently we have six call centres in the country and another six will be added by next year.”

Indya tickets will also provide value-added services to the trader community.