RedBus.in Gets Another 6.5 Million in Funding

RedBus.in – a company that provides online bus ticket bookings in India received 6.5 million in funding this week from Helion Venture Partners. This is a great example of a .in name in action being used to build a major global brand. One of the other interesting things about this company is that it really doesn’t take a pretty website to get funding, it just takes a great idea and service.

redbus_site

While the site is not horribly ugly it certainly isn’t a great looking site – the focus is functionality and when it comes to booking a bus trip this really is all you need. Helion Venture partners is no stranger to investing in Internet companies as they also funded LetsBuy.com and a number of other ventures.

As a Domainer I look at these deals with an investors eye (or at least I try to!) and try to understand how the domain name adds value to the business. In the case of RedBus.in this is one of those names that is easy to remember and for me I get the image of one of those classic British tour buses in my head. Either way since you’re booking a bus trip it does make a lot of sense to have the word “bus” in the domain.

The domain name was registered in February of 2007 and is owned by a different company than the owner of RedBus.com which is a company that acquires struggling businesses and turns them around…which to me seems like a pretty crappy use of the name RedBus.com, shouldn’t they have gone with something with the word “business” or “biz” in it and leave RedBus.com for someone that does something bus-related?

Either way it doesn’t seem to have impacted RedBus.in, they have their .in domain and now another 6.5 million bucks to spend on expanding their business. Just another great example of what happens when you turn a simple domain name into a real business!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton