On Sri Lankan buses with Busbooking
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As a schoolboy travelling from Kottawa to Colombo by bus, Dinusha Kornkaduwa used to dream of how nice it would be to be able to have a guaranteed seat and travel in comfort. That never materialized but today he and a group of friends have banded together and formed BusBooking.lk which provides thousands of passengers just that. Started just two years ago, BusBooking is Sri Lanka’s first-ever booking and reservation service provider for the public passenger transport sector with a fully automated multi-platform booking engine which comes with a convenient bus schedule. “I used to travel to school by bus on the 138 route from Kottawa to Pettah and was well used to the inconveniences.
But it was only a few years ago that I got this idea to start this platform with my memory being jogged by watching the long queues of people in Maharagama standing for hours to grab a seat on the long-distance buses on the Southern Expressway,” Dinusha reveals. Two years ago, together with Moratuwa University chums Udantha Pathirana and Madhura Jayaratne, Dinusha began this service to provide a better passenger experience for long distance travellers on private buses. “Even though the public was paying more for this service they were spending a lot of time, sometimes up to two hours standing in queues, to get a seat on a bus.
Our innovative solution now means they can cut out that waiting time which can be spent in a more productive way,” says Dinusha. BusBooking only deals with private bus operators at the moment – talks with the Sri Lanka Transport Board is ongoing – and have a dozen or so operators on board translating to 82 buses which run on a daily basis to and from Colombo to Jaffna, Colombo to Nuwara Eliya, Colombo to Batticaloa to name a few destinations. “We only handle long distance travel as passengers don’t book seats for short distance travel and at the moment it is only on private buses.
We have pitched our idea to the SLTB and we are talking to them but for now, if you are searching for convenience and dependability we can only offer luxury and semi-luxury buses with private bus operators. ” The public can book seats easily. An access to a computer opens the doors to a website where with a few clicks you can ensure that your trip down South to Galle or up North to Jaffna is comfortable and hassle-free. You can also book on your mobile phone – no need for a smart phone as it can be done by SMS – or if you are really a Luddite who abhors technology, then a simple call is answered by staff who will do the needful and book your seats on your preferred dates. Payments can be made online using a credit card or if you prefer using your debit card then that too is accepted. For each ticket, BusBooking charges a
60- rupee ‘booking charge’.
At the moment there are 82 buses on the BusBooking fleet. The owners of the buses like getting on board with the company as they can be assured that a proper audit is kept of revenue instead of having to depend on the conductors who can be as light fingered as Dickensian character Fagin. There are around 6,000 buses in the country, more private than SLTB – 3,300 belonging to private bus operators and 2,700 run by the state-owned machinery. BusBooking has ambitiously set its sight on increasing their involvement from 82 to 1,500 buses in the next two years offering the public a wide range of options including destinations. “When we started two years ago we had only around 100 customers in the first month. Today that number has increased to 10,000 a month and we hope to keep on rising incrementally.
” Changing the mindset of the public as well as getting bus operators on board is a challenge. Most people still prefer to turn up and buy their tickets even if it means having to stand in a queue. But change is happening as people become more accustomed to using their credit cards online. Start-up capital was three million rupees. But now with expansion in the air, the three partners are looking for investment and more seed money which will allow them to carry out a big advertising campaign – so far it has all been done on social media and by word of mouth – as well as increase the number of bodies at the service centre. “We are looking at offering a 15 per cent stake in our company for anyone who can come up with 15 million rupees,” says Dinusha. It can be a good buy-in for the long-term goal of BusBooking is to take this model and apply it to countries in Africa and other countries in Asia.
Nigeria and Rwanda has been targeted in Africa while Bangladesh is a juicy prospect in South Asia. ”Sri Lanka is a limited market and we can grow only so much. As such we have done studies in certain countries in Africa and Asia which has a similar transport infrastructure to ours and the aim is to one day move in to these countries. In this way, what we are doing now is basically to test the product here,” Dinusha revealed. high demand for tickets. It might be hard to replicate the conditions in Sri Lanka in places like Nigeria and Bangladesh but the sheer populations of those countries will more than make up for demand. And what about TrainBooking? “We are thinking about it too and will be having further discussion with Sri Lanka Railway,” Dinusha added. -(Alvin)