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Success Story of a Startup.
Indian startups are reaching new heights each day. Led by some of the best minds globally, the Indian startup ecosystem is flourishing, but it wasn’t always this way.
A few years after the internet boom in the country, a group of engineers started companies that now dominate various segments.
One notable example is Redbus, founded by Phanindra Sama, Sudhakar Pasupunuri, and Charan Padmaraju in 2006 as an online bus ticket booking service. The founders became friends while graduating from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, and worked together at various organisations before starting the company. The trio began with just Rs 5 lakh, and Redbus currently has a net worth of more than Rs 6985 crore.
Phanindra Sama is credited as the key member who conceived the idea for the service when he struggled to book a bus ticket to his hometown during a festival season. Under Sama’s leadership, Redbus revolutionised the bus ticketing process in India, making it easier, more transparent, and accessible.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Sama worked as a designer of integrated circuits at Texas Instruments. In 2007, RedBus secured its first round of funding of 1 million dollars, and with support from some of the biggest investors in the country, it became the market leader within a few years.
In 2013, Redbus was acquired by the Ibibo Group, a joint venture of South Africa’s Naspers and China’s Tencent, in one of the largest overseas deals in the Indian startup ecosystem at that time, valued at Rs 828 crore. Following the acquisition, Sama remained involved with Redbus for a while, before moving on to other ventures.
Notably, he has been actively involved in various social initiatives and philanthropy work, serving as the Chief Innovation Officer of the State of Telangana and contributing his expertise to enhance innovation and technology implementation in governance.
