Book My Show !
Try recalling the frustrating times you would have to stand in a queue just to get a movie ticket and ended up seeing it go houseful in front of your eyes. Who would have thought one could be booking tickets through their phones, just sitting at home? Well, gone are the days when we had to stand in queues for long hours just to book a ticket. Booking a ticket has been simplified to a whole different level. It is now just a few clicks away. All this is possible due to the ever-developing technology and the mastermind behind this concept, Ashish Hemrajani.
Ashish Hemrajani completed his graduation from Mumbai University in 1997 and without much thought, immediately joined a big shot company in the form of JW Thomson. In 1999, Ashish was enjoying a vacation in South Africa where he heard about Rugby ticket booking through Radio. This turned out to be a Eureka moment for him! Ashish now jokingly says that alcohol was what gave him the push at that instant. He researched his idea and planned to have an internet ticket selling website. No one really understood his concept and in fact his parents completely disagreed with him thinking he was entering the black market for selling tickets! Well, it indeed was a quirky idea at that time.
But Ashish had complete faith in his idea and it was to such an extent that he left his job for it. Ashish with his friends Parikshit Dasr and Rajesh Balpande opened a company - Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. through which they would purchase movie tickets in bulk and deliver them door to door. In India at that time, there was no proper internet connection, no online banking, no credit card or debit card system for Ashish's idea to flourish. Seeing that there were low chances of success, no investor was ready to invest in Ashish's ideaIn 2001, a company named JP Morgan decided to invest, which helped the trio expand their business to new cities all over India. But in 2002, bursting of the Dot com bubble, the company incurred a huge loss resulting in the investors to take their hands off. This caused closure of all their offices except the ones in Mumbai and New Delhi. The number of employees also dropped from 150 down to 6, as they were incapable of even paying the employees their salaries. The period of 2002-2006 was a bit of a roadblock in an already uphill journey for Ashish and his friends.
Later, the development rate In India increased along with the total change in infrastructure. Seeing the emergence of a huge number of multiplexes, Ashish grabbed the opportunity and started an authorized tickets booking software which turned out to be really successful. In 2007, Network 18 invested ₹14.5 Cr. and by March 2007 Ashish started with his website bookmyshow.com with a ticket booking of cinemas
Book My Show is the first ticket booking app/website in India where one can book tickets for movies, cricket matches, Formula One Races and many other sporting events as well. Book my Show operates in 5 different countries with more than 30 million customers. Among the many successes of Book My Show, it was the official ticketing partner for most of the IPL teams back in 2010. In 2017, the tickets for Ed Sheeran’s Live concert in Mumbai were sold out in less than an hour
Book My Show charges 10% convenience fees on any ticket booking and this is the source of their revenue
Book My Show currently has more than 30 million app downloads and has more than 10 million tickets bookings per month, along with almost 3 billion page views in a month. It operates in 4 countries. In India BMS is available in 350 cities and over 3500 screens all over the country.
Book My Show has now become a brand that most people prefer over conventional ticket booking methods. Even after having failed at the beginning, today BMS has a revenue of ₹300 crore. Ashish Hemrajani and his team have taught us how to overcome difficult situations. How to learn to pick ourselves up