It would be no surprise to anyone that the pandemic dealt a knockout blow to Bookmyshow (BMS)—India’s largest online entertainment ticketing platform—which primarily relied on people going to the movies for revenue.
But BMS’s recovery since then has been both surprising and impressive.
While it has taken the company about three years, in FY23, its revenue is pegged to be over Rs 700 crore (US$88 million), according to two employees of the company, matching its pre-covid revenues. In fact, BMS is even mulling mulling The Economic Times BookMyShow exploring possibilities of IPO, holds talks with merchant bankers Read more going public since the end of 2022.
The comeback holds meaning because BMS can be compared to a ball that shrank during the pandemic from one you would hold in both hands to one that can sit on your palm. Year-on-year revenues dwindled to a seventh in FY21, and losses stayed constant at Rs 220 crore (US$29 million). For FY22, the company’s revenues grew 3X to Rs 302 crore (US$40 million), while losses came down to Rs 92 crore (US$12 million).
But as the group’s founder and chief executive (CEO) Ashish Hemrajani noted noted YourStory ASHISH HEMRAJANI REVEALS BOOKMYSHOW’S PLAYBOOK ON STAYING THE COURSE TO STEER OUT OF THE STORM Read more at: https://yourstory.com/2021/10/ashish-hemrajani-bookmyshow-playbook-techsparks-2021 Read more in media interviews, the crisis also presented an opportunity for the company to transform fundamentally.
The company’s culture has now become oriented towards efficiency, according to an employee. “Earlier, the product team would mindlessly execute instructions from the business team,” said a third employee. “Now there is healthy pushback on what will work and not, whether it is in line with the vision for the next two years, and how teams will collaborate.”
Several BMS employees and associates The Ken spoke to for this story asked not to be named as they didn’t want to be seen publicly commenting on their company.
The reduced traffic also allowed the company to transition from on-premises data centres to the cloud using a platform like Amazon Web Services, which led to an 80% reduction 80% reduction AWS Big Data Blog How BookMyShow saved 80% in costs by migrating to an AWS modern data architecture Read more in infrastructure costs.
