#bookmyshow and #PVR Merger : An analysis

So I believe everyone must have heard about the PVR and Bookmyshow tie up. Now, we can book shows for the PVR cinema halls from Bookmyshow, which makes the portal an all theatre encompassing portal. We consumers have nowhere else to go but to this site to book tickets for all the theatres in town.

Lets have a look at how this tie-up will be a win win situation for both the players, and the consumers.

Online Ticket Booking – An Overview

In the pre-internet era, movie tickets were initially sold at the ticket counters. You would find long queues in front of the movie hall whenever a new movie was released. By guaging at the length of the queue, you could tell whether a film was a dud, hit, or a superhit.

The closest one got to online booking was telebooking, where one would call and book their tickets in advance in the cinema hall.

With internet, came e-commerce, and the convenience of booking tickets for services like Travel and movies from home. As technology progressed, the number of platforms from which the online portal could be accessed increased from laptops to mobile phones, to smartphones to tablets.

Along with convenience for consumers, came power to the cinema halls to access the enormous data about consumer preferences, and an opportunity to understand them better. As internet marketing capabilities went up, brands got the power to gauge which consumer to target for what product.

Advantage to BookmyShow.com

Bigtree Entertainment ( The parent company of Bookmyshow.com) entered into the e-commerce arena in 2001 with the funding from Network 18, and since then, has been a major player in the online ticket sales for events, plays, shows and of course, cinema.  It currently holds almost 90% of the total market share in its industry.

Very recently, it has acquired greenticket.com. This deal will give BigTree access to partnerships with over 100 regional cinemas that greenticket has forged in the southern states where it sells nearly one lakh tickets per month. This shows how it is slowly taking steps towards the only portal every movie goer would turn to when it has to book tickets.

With PVR as its partner, it has now access to one of the biggest movie hall chains in India, making it a one stop destination for all online ticket buyers. Now, it becomes easier for them to attract the rest of the movie hall chains like Cinepolis, to extend its reach further, and take steps towards its objective of becoming the ‘ONLY’ player in the business. ( Though this seems tough, as in another industry,  even once gods like Yahoo fell to the speed of technology and disruption and is now struggling to make its mark in the m-commerce industry)

Advantage to PVR

For PVR, it becomes easier to get access to a bigger online audience. While their earlier target audience was a PVR loyalist group who would download their app or visit their website for booking tickets specifically in PVR, now their target has expanded to all movie goers who go to a portal to book tickets. Also, many of us who were unaware of the existence of a PVR app, and always wondered why there was no PVR cinema hall in Bookmyshow, would be pleasantly surprised to find it there.

Here, we also need to understand the consumer mindset.

There are two kinds of bookings done by the online ticket booker : Advance bookings, done much in advance, and tickets booked in a frenzy. For advance bookings, people take the liberty to book tickets in the cinema halls of their choice, while for the tickets booked in a frenzy, the priority is availability.

While quality IS a concern when it comes to booking tickets online, for a friday show or the opening weekend, the top priority becomes availability of tickets and proximity of the the hall to the current location. Unless the quality is really bad, or the hall has some really bad feedback, we tend to overlook it. Once one gets into the hall, it is up to the customer service to make a good enough impression to make the audience come back to it again an again.

Till now, PVR was catering to its loyalists who would book tickets much in advance, but used to miss out on those who booked tickets in a frenzy. With this tie-up, PVR would be able to do both, and with it, expand its base of loyalists, and poach audiences from other cinema halls too.

Also, with BMS handling its digital marketing efforts according to the deal, PVR will be able to target its audience in a much better way, and provide customized offers and visibility to it select group. This would help it in tying up with the right brands, provide the right BTL services, and enhance the overall customer experience.

The only downside of this tie-up would be if PVR starts losing its audience to other cinema halls. It will have to pull up its pants, and make the experience good enough for the audience for them to come back to them again and again.

Advantage to the consumer

With only one portal to book tickets from, an online ticket can be booked for all the cinema halls in the city from one place. This not only helps in reducing confusion, it also gives more options to the consumer. If one is new to the city, he knows this BMS app will show him all the options for the theatres in town. This is exactly what a ticket booking app should be.

#SadarBazaar : The home of Customized #HomeDecor

So its been 3 months for me in this concrete jungle called Gurgaon. Till this time, I was a bit caught up to settle down and get my home in place. My temporary abode had everything you would need except a table. For 3 months, I worked lying down on bed. But after 3 months,when I actually got bored of not having a table around to sit and write on, I finally decided to get a good wooden table for myself.

A friend told me about Sadar Bazaar, the biggest and finest place to buy good, cheap furniture. This post is about my journey into the wooden kingdom. Or rather, the place where you will find anything and everything related to home decor: Furniture, Kitchen appliances, Showpieces, Everything.

Strangely, you will find a market named Sadar Bazaar in every city you go. Apparently, any marketplace which sells wholesale home requirements, starting from wooden furnitures to steel almirah, would be called Sadar Bazaar. This is partly because of the brand this place has built over tie, and partly, due to the lack of imagination of the shoppers in this place who do not really care of a different name as long as the customers know where to come.

So, on a weekend afternoon, I happened to visit the original Sadar Bazaar looking for a wooden table. The place took me by surprise. It was teeming with people. I stood wondering what are so many people doing out on the streets on a sweaty saturday afternoon! But then I looked around, and I saw what this place had to offer. You would be amazed by the variety you find in this place. Lets take the example of chairs. Right from the material of the chair (plastic, wood, metal, steel, leather, etc) to the design, height, width,  cushioned, non-cushioned, to coming attached with a small table on its side, you would be able to find everything. This place had something for everyone.

I visited the furniture market part of the huge Sadar Bazaar. While looking through the shops, I happened to speak to several owners about the way business is conducted in the market.

Most of the shops are ancestral, being run by the children of the ones who had originally set up shop there. For the people in Sadar Bazaar, it is a family business. The raw materials come from old vendors who have been in the business for a long time. The carpenters are seasoned, some of them working for the past 30 years, and their children are now being groomed to be a part of this business.

All the furniture is made in-house. This allows a lot of customization to be done. Hence, a huge amount of variety will be found once you start taking a stroll in the market. Tables, chairs, almirahs, you name it, and they would make the one which you thought in your mind.  The furniture can be customized in any way you want them. Right from the material used to make the furniture, to the size, to the accessories. However, the prices would differ accordingly. Customization takes a little more time though, but the furniture will be delivered at your door step.

The rates are set according to the shopkeepers, and it would be difficult finding the same rate at any shop because of the level of customization of furniture.  Though there is a lot of deviation in prices, very few are ready to bargain. This is because the market is primarily a wholesale market, and if you go there to buy only one furniture, they will not bargain much for it.

Also, if you would want the furniture to be made at your house, the costs would be higher. This is because at home, the carpenter has to dedicatedly work on one furniture while in the store, he can work on multiple products at the same time distributing his efforts in different jobs. Also, if any of the parts get damaged, it can be coated up which is not possible if the manufacturing is taking place at the client’s home. Hence, the higher rates.

The shoppers don’t mind if you go and buy it from the nearby store, as they know that if you go, the other would come. Furnitures of the same design would have different prices across stores. Hence, you might have to visit a lot of stores to actually find the right furniture at the right price.

I had a hard time choosing tables. They were of different shapes, sizes and heights. Some had a glass top, some were with cabinets. I was looking for a specific type of table, one with drawers instead of cabinets. I visited almost 15 different stores before I was able to spot the right one. I started bargaining, but they would not budge much. Hence, my tactics changed to buying a table and a chair, and then bargaining on the combined price of both. Once he got the price down, I removed the chair from the equation, and then was able to reduce the price down.

While leaving the market, I asked the store owner whether he is scared that the business might be dying because of different MNCs coming into the market. the old guy seemed to chuckle, and said, “Hum jitni variety dete hain, utna in logon ne kar liya, to inko apni company ka naam Sadar Bazaar rakhna pad jaaega.” I couldnt agree more. It is very difficult to customize furnitures on large scale. Standardization is the name of the game for the big companies, while this market has made its name because of the variety found here.

If you are looking for a customized wooden table, or a cushioned chair for yourself, I would recommend visiting Sadar Bazaar to you. The best place to get affordable, durable and customized furniture for yourself.