Business - Ticketwala.com

Ticketvala.com, the portal for booking bus tickets, is rolling out a national campaign to promote its services. The campaign will be largely in print, but will be supported by radio, outdoor and online media. The company, which offers ticket home delivery services in seven major cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, has started off the campaign in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It will soon be moving to the Northern cities. Haranath Lokanadham, chief executive officer and president of Ticketvala.com, says the company is spending Rs 2.3-3 crore on the campaign, a fair amount of which will go into print ads. The campaign has been created by Saints and Warriors in Mumbai. The simple print ads are based on a single premise – convenience to the customer. With the tagline of ‘Click or call, that’s all!’, there is a series of six print ads with headlines such as ‘Learn from politicians when it comes to tickets. Get things done on phone.’ Lokanadham says that apart from English, the campaign may be launched in regional languages, too. Speaking about the campaign, Pushpinder Singh, chairman of Saints and Warriors, says, “Ticketvala.com has an edge because of the technology it has perfected for bus fleet operators. However, the customer is not concerned about technology and his key motive for coming on the site is convenience.”The agency has created a mascot for Ticketvala, which, Singh says, “stands for convenience and represents the common man”.The radio spot in English is a spoof on actor Rajnikanth’s style and is in the form of a jingle. The same ad will be played in all the cities as it has been created with pan India appeal, according to the agency.The outdoor campaign will be based on the print ads, but there will be some localisation in each city and will refer to the locations in each city where people go to buy bus tickets. Ticketvala recently hired Mudra Connext, an independent agency of Mudra MAX, as its integrated media agency. Lokanadham says about 250 tickets are booked per day on the site from more than 300 operators. “We hope to double this number (of bookings) after the campaign,” he adds. Ticketvala is owned by Travis Internet Pvt. Ltd and was launched in 2006. It originally focused on providing technology solutions to bus operators. In 2007, it launched bus ticketing and delivery services for consumers through the portal and a toll free number. The company received $2 million in funding from FootPrint Ventures in November 2007. Ticketvala is also expanding into other services, such as budget hotels, car hire and bus hire