Measure What Matters – 10X Growth

Manoj Agarwala - Senior Vice President - Inventory Sales & International Business

 

“We don’t grow by looking at past accomplishments. It’s what you do now that counts.”

 

redBus Malaysia business delivered a 10x business growth between Sep 2017 and Sep 2019. In pure numbers, this translates into growth from 1000 seats per day to 10000 seats per day.

 

This unprecedented success was driven by coming together of a passionate cross-functional team guided by an entrepreneurial mind-set, and a relentless pursuit of defined goals. The Malaysia business was launched in mid-2015, and as with every new business or market, it took time for things to settle down. By early 2017, we had our strategy ironed out following multiple experiments around Supply, Product and Go To market. We had our share of failures but what kept us going was a strong belief in what we were trying to achieve through a two-sided marketplace model in the bus ticketing space in Malaysia.

 

While the business was being built on firm principles, keeping the interests of Malaysian Bus operators and consumer preferences in mind, the learnings from our India experience were extremely useful. The Product and Technology team based in India gelled wonderfully with the Business Development and Operations team based locally. In spite of the fact that many members of the team had never seen each other (except over Zoom calls), the camaraderie and empathy for each other was palpable. The collective drive towards achieving goals was so high that every single milestone was cheered over WhatsApp groups even at midnight.

 

While the small Supply and Operations team held forte locally, a dedicated group of people at the India office across functions like Product, Technology, Marketing, Finance etc. were busy churning customer-centric products and campaigns to create an ecosystem that no one had ever tried before.

 

Today as we reminisce our journey, we can safely say that our Malaysia success story has been a true manifestation of how the value system of "being" and "doing" formed the core of our belief and actions.