Comments on: Interview with Mantis Team (IIM A guys who ditched a fat pay cheque job to startup)

By: Pravin Kawadkar

Pravin Kawadkar — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:09:29 +0000

Hi Arvind
First of all congrats for starting this venture to democratize bus ticketing services in india. Your concept of offering bus tickets like rail ways tickets is great. Two questions
1. What is the value addition for bus operators? You listed some above but I am still not sure How you are able to convince bus operators, who has different mindset from organized sector people?
2. Are you offering services thru mobile? It would be good idea to do so.

Please start services on Nagpur – Raipur, Nagpur-Indore routes.

-Pravin

By: 90di.com Blog » Blog Archive » 90di.com partners with Travel Yaari (Mantis) to enhance its bus search

Sat, 16 May 2009 06:40:10 +0000

[...] Now 90di.com have partnered with Travelyaari (Mantis) to enhance its existing bus search services. Mantis has a unique approach to bus reservation in which they are building a first of its kind GDS like system for buses. Read more about Mantis here. [...]

By: Kunal Mehta

Kunal Mehta — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:06:05 +0000

Punjab side you have Baba, ND, Heera travels. HP side you have Blue world, City heart, Chawla. Rao/Panicker are good with package in this route. Jammu (particularly Katra sector) is also very good.
Jaipur side State govt buses like silver line and golden line are very good.

No one provides tickets in these routes. My friend had tried to book with one of the websites offering services. But during boarding he was told there is no reservation.

If I understand your model correctly, you are running something like the indian railways booking system. If that is the case, there will be no such issues of no reservation or wrong ticket price.

Do consider delhi actively for your expansion. Agra also is a hot destination. You can run package service to agra. Will really earn you a lot of money and help travelers like me to book from home. Going to the bus stand and getting an advance reservation is quite painful in delhi

By: Aurvind Lama

Aurvind Lama — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:00:34 +0000

Hi Bablo, thanks… we shall expand to other bus routes soon.

By: Aurvind Lama

Aurvind Lama — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:58:46 +0000

Hi Kunal, We are happy to know that you liked travelyaari.com
We shall soon expand to other bus routes as well. It would be great if you could kindly tell us the names of bus operators who plies buses between Delhi and HP/ JK/ Punjab

By: Aurvind Lama

Aurvind Lama — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:50:31 +0000

the differences between travelyaarr.com and others are following:
1. Travelyaari does not work on quota. Its shows the live bus charts and the travelers can select available seats/ sleepers
2. All the bookings are confirmed on the spot. We donot have request based booking.
3. No additional service fee

By: Aurvind Lama

Aurvind Lama — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:40:03 +0000

Glad you liked our model. Travelyaari.com has been integrated with bus Meta search sites like travel.bixee.com and Ixigo.com. We are also giving our bus API to Online Travel Agents and offline aggregators

By: Bablo

Bablo — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:58:49 +0000

good show guys.. travelyaari.com is cool, only that you need to expand your route coverage a lot.

By: Vivek Rajagopalan

Vivek Rajagopalan — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:46:17 +0000

There is competition, but I think the Mantis team has a great chance.

Ashish,if I may pick on the title of the post. I think every entrepreneur has had high paying job options, not just the IIMA guys. It is however a good sign that more Indians are willing to take the plunge.

By: vikas shah

vikas shah — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:27:36 +0000

If mantis is offering unique services than what are redbus,ticketwala,abhibus,elinebus.com are offering?

By: Kunal Mehta

Kunal Mehta — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:09:59 +0000

WOW! I cant believe IIM Ahmedabad guys are into bus travel industry. Sometime back I had read one of their guys were into music industry!

I love their model. Really a very nicely written article (kudos plugged in).

Its a nightmare to get a ticket in delhi. But looks like my bus travel woes will soon end.

Travelyaari.com looks neat. However, they lack routes from delhi to places like JK/HP/Punjab.

Arvind – if you are reading this, please introduce these routes. Will really help travelers like me. You will also profit a lot, because there is a huge market for these tickets in delhi.

By: Nilesh

Nilesh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:33:17 +0000

A very good read. I also like Mantis’ business model. Good work.

I hope they keep their platform open by publishing data and booking APIs. There is a lot of innovation that is just waiting to happen with those.