 "Entertainment on phones to beat travel pains")
Long bus rides can be a pain and Anand Sinha, the former national sales head of Zomato, knows the travails of lonely travel well enough. Before a business trip to Amritsar from Delhi - a distance of 465 km and a journey of nearly eight hours - Sinha bought 10 tablets and uploaded five movies in each. On the bus, he didn't watch all the movies himself - he rented them out to his fellow passengers.
The enthusiastic response prompted him and his friend and colleague George Abraham to start PressPlay - providing content (films, music) to travellers during long journeys. Initially, PressPlay used to rent out tablets on buses. Now, it is moving to an app-based business model, providing entertainment content through cellphone apps. The service would also be soon available on cabs, trains and even flights.
The road till now
In 2011, Sinha joined online restaurant-searching website Zomato in New Delhi as a sales manager. But even during the three years he worked there, Sinha and Abraham kept alive the dream of their own business. They started a food business but in three months, the duo decided to shut shop as they could not manage it.
Then, they contemplated food technology, sports management and sports tourism but did not quite strike gold.
Sinha's job required him to travel across the country and in the course of his journeys he discovered the paucity of entertainment. Traditionally, during bus journeys, the travel company would play movies on a TV. "Providing laptops would be an expensive proposition. Tablets are relatively cheaper," said Sinha.
Then, in April 2013, during a bus ride to Amritsar, he tried out the 10 tablets. "The rent for each was Rs 100," he said "They were gone in minutes."
Convinced of the business's viability he quit Zomato in December 2013 and launched PressPlay with Abraham.
Asked why they chose tablets, Sinha said: "We are not engineers and we don't know how to develop solutions and apps. The easiest way is to upload movies and songs on a memory card and rent it out."
In the first six months, the company rented out 1,000 tablets to over 1,00,000 travellers. The operations spread to 14 cities within three months, said Sinha.
"Convincing bus operators wasn't too difficult. The service and risks were ours," said Sinha. "We don't pay the bus operators. For them, this is an add-on service for their travellers."
Trick of the trade
As a bus is about to depart, a PressPlay operator boards it and pitches the product to travellers. After 10 minutes, he gets off.
For Rs 100, the passengers can watch a movie or two or listen to music on tablets, which are attached to their seats. The devices are collected by another PressPlay representative at the destination.
For content, PressPlay has partnered with a number of games studios and production houses. It has never encountered a funding challenge, attracting investors from day one. Sinha and Abraham raised the initial funds from friends and family, bought China-made tablets with a battery-life of five hours.
Seed capital was raised from angel investor Amit Bhaitani, who gave them $500,000. Recently, the company raised $2.2 million from Sequoia Capital and a group of eight angel investors, including Jason Hirschhorn, Jarett Posner and Amit Bhatiani. "The challenge was execution, asset and inventory management," said Sinha. Former colleagues from Zomato as well as new recruits strengthened their team. Depending heavily on operations, the initial challenge was to convince clients to try out their unique service. The second and more acute challenge was protecting their assets.
Never wanting to install hardware permanently or involve a third party in their operations, the company spent a lot of time researching to make their hardware optimum. The innovation they came up with was the locking system that can be operated only by PressPlay operatives.
Growth plan
From an entertainment provider, PressPlay plans to become a content discovery platform. So, the tablets are out and content is being now provided through smartphones.
Travellers can now go online on Wi-Fi, provided by PressPlay, on a bus and access the company's app TouchPlay on their smart phones. The app will soon have 30 movies, 1,000 songs, 10 documentaries and cartoons. For Rs 10, travellers can accesses the content for the first 30 minutes. They can access it for the rest of the journey by paying Rs 10 more through an SMS. The content - available in regional languages, besides Hindi and English - can be downloaded for free.
At present, it has 60,000 users per month. The company plans to reach 100,000 by the end of this month (May).
It already partners with 60 private and five state bus operators in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Talks are on to expand to Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Plans are also afoot to expand to the east by starting services in Kolkata and go beyond the national borders by launching services in Thailand and Philippines and Southeast Asian countries. They plan to become a billion dollar company in the next three years, and report profit in two.
The expansion plans would be funded through another investment of $8-10 million, said Sinha. PressPlay's main challenge is determine the mode of payment by customers. At present, the SMS-mode allows they to deduct money from a pre-paid account or add to a post-paid one but there are customers who don't trust that the content would be delivered once the payment is made.
"We need to win their trust," said Sinha. EXPERT TAKE: Sunil Kalra
PressPlay is one of the most exciting start-ups I have seen recently. It offers a unique solution. Press Play's app makes our journeys more meaningful. Low-cost access to content such as movies, videos, and games for people on the move is a terrific idea.
In India, people do not have the ability to pay roaming charges for data. The number of people downloading the PressPlay app every day is very impressive. All of this growth is organic and hence the user acquisition cost is low. If they succeed in what they are tying, this company will be well positioned to build a go-to app for global content discovery.
The team has already deployed their boxes in more than 1,000 buses, and is now in talks with taxi and airline operators. Over time, they should be able to deploy their solution across all travel verticals.
Execution, scale and revenue model are the key challenges for most consumer businesses. But the team is strong and very committed to facing these challenges.
Sunil Kalra is an angel investor and member of the Indian Angel Network. Besides PressPlay, Kalra has invested in almost 60 other start-ups in the technology space.
The enthusiastic response prompted him and his friend and colleague George Abraham to start PressPlay - providing content (films, music) to travellers during long journeys. Initially, PressPlay used to rent out tablets on buses. Now, it is moving to an app-based business model, providing entertainment content through cellphone apps. The service would also be soon available on cabs, trains and even flights.
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The road till now
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A Delhi native, Sinha studied commerce in Bengaluru. After completing his graduation, he joined Deshaw, a Hyderabad-based hedge fund, as a research analyst. Abraham was his colleague at the company, and soon became his roommate.
In 2011, Sinha joined online restaurant-searching website Zomato in New Delhi as a sales manager. But even during the three years he worked there, Sinha and Abraham kept alive the dream of their own business. They started a food business but in three months, the duo decided to shut shop as they could not manage it.
Then, they contemplated food technology, sports management and sports tourism but did not quite strike gold.
Sinha's job required him to travel across the country and in the course of his journeys he discovered the paucity of entertainment. Traditionally, during bus journeys, the travel company would play movies on a TV. "Providing laptops would be an expensive proposition. Tablets are relatively cheaper," said Sinha.
Then, in April 2013, during a bus ride to Amritsar, he tried out the 10 tablets. "The rent for each was Rs 100," he said "They were gone in minutes."
Convinced of the business's viability he quit Zomato in December 2013 and launched PressPlay with Abraham.
Asked why they chose tablets, Sinha said: "We are not engineers and we don't know how to develop solutions and apps. The easiest way is to upload movies and songs on a memory card and rent it out."
In the first six months, the company rented out 1,000 tablets to over 1,00,000 travellers. The operations spread to 14 cities within three months, said Sinha.
"Convincing bus operators wasn't too difficult. The service and risks were ours," said Sinha. "We don't pay the bus operators. For them, this is an add-on service for their travellers."
Trick of the trade
As a bus is about to depart, a PressPlay operator boards it and pitches the product to travellers. After 10 minutes, he gets off.
For Rs 100, the passengers can watch a movie or two or listen to music on tablets, which are attached to their seats. The devices are collected by another PressPlay representative at the destination.
For content, PressPlay has partnered with a number of games studios and production houses. It has never encountered a funding challenge, attracting investors from day one. Sinha and Abraham raised the initial funds from friends and family, bought China-made tablets with a battery-life of five hours.
Seed capital was raised from angel investor Amit Bhaitani, who gave them $500,000. Recently, the company raised $2.2 million from Sequoia Capital and a group of eight angel investors, including Jason Hirschhorn, Jarett Posner and Amit Bhatiani. "The challenge was execution, asset and inventory management," said Sinha. Former colleagues from Zomato as well as new recruits strengthened their team. Depending heavily on operations, the initial challenge was to convince clients to try out their unique service. The second and more acute challenge was protecting their assets.
Never wanting to install hardware permanently or involve a third party in their operations, the company spent a lot of time researching to make their hardware optimum. The innovation they came up with was the locking system that can be operated only by PressPlay operatives.
Growth plan
From an entertainment provider, PressPlay plans to become a content discovery platform. So, the tablets are out and content is being now provided through smartphones.
Travellers can now go online on Wi-Fi, provided by PressPlay, on a bus and access the company's app TouchPlay on their smart phones. The app will soon have 30 movies, 1,000 songs, 10 documentaries and cartoons. For Rs 10, travellers can accesses the content for the first 30 minutes. They can access it for the rest of the journey by paying Rs 10 more through an SMS. The content - available in regional languages, besides Hindi and English - can be downloaded for free.
At present, it has 60,000 users per month. The company plans to reach 100,000 by the end of this month (May).
It already partners with 60 private and five state bus operators in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Talks are on to expand to Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Plans are also afoot to expand to the east by starting services in Kolkata and go beyond the national borders by launching services in Thailand and Philippines and Southeast Asian countries. They plan to become a billion dollar company in the next three years, and report profit in two.
The expansion plans would be funded through another investment of $8-10 million, said Sinha. PressPlay's main challenge is determine the mode of payment by customers. At present, the SMS-mode allows they to deduct money from a pre-paid account or add to a post-paid one but there are customers who don't trust that the content would be delivered once the payment is made.
"We need to win their trust," said Sinha. EXPERT TAKE: Sunil Kalra
PressPlay is one of the most exciting start-ups I have seen recently. It offers a unique solution. Press Play's app makes our journeys more meaningful. Low-cost access to content such as movies, videos, and games for people on the move is a terrific idea.
In India, people do not have the ability to pay roaming charges for data. The number of people downloading the PressPlay app every day is very impressive. All of this growth is organic and hence the user acquisition cost is low. If they succeed in what they are tying, this company will be well positioned to build a go-to app for global content discovery.
The team has already deployed their boxes in more than 1,000 buses, and is now in talks with taxi and airline operators. Over time, they should be able to deploy their solution across all travel verticals.
Execution, scale and revenue model are the key challenges for most consumer businesses. But the team is strong and very committed to facing these challenges.
Sunil Kalra is an angel investor and member of the Indian Angel Network. Besides PressPlay, Kalra has invested in almost 60 other start-ups in the technology space.