BookMyShow: A Startup That Survived Everything

In a country where movie-going is nothing short of a religion, you’d think buying a ticket would be easy. But rewind to the early 2000s, and the experience was anything but smooth. Long queues outside cinema halls, ticket scalping, cash-only counters, and zero visibility into availability—it was chaos disguised as routine.

This was the Indian entertainment landscape before BookMyShow came into play. A time when the internet was a novelty, smartphones didn’t exist, and "online booking" sounded like science fiction. The industry was ripe for disruption—but it would take more than just technology to solve the mess. It would take vision, grit, and the ability to survive in a market notorious for its unpredictability.

Enter BookMyShow—a startup that didn’t just build a ticketing platform, but reshaped the entire event experience for millions of Indians. What started as a dot-com experiment in 1999 slowly evolved into the country’s leading entertainment ticketing platform, spanning movies, concerts, cricket matches, comedy shows, and global live events.

But BookMyShow’s journey wasn’t a straight line to success. It was a rollercoaster. From weathering the dot-com crash, to surviving a near-death pandemic blow, and then orchestrating a bold comeback—BookMyShow's story is packed with lessons for founders, product builders, and anyone navigating uncertain markets.

This in-depth case study breaks down:

• What the Indian entertainment space looked like before BookMyShow

• How the founders identified and acted on a broken system

• The strategic pivots that helped them survive two market collapses

• And why their evolution holds key insights for the future of digital platforms in emerging markets

Whether you're a startup founder looking for inspiration, a product manager studying scale, or a curious reader fascinated by digital India’s biggest wins—BookMyShow’s story is one worth knowing.

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Chapter 1: The Early Journey of BookMyShow – From Idea to Initial Failure

Every great company starts with a deceptively simple question. For BookMyShow, that question was:

“Why is buying a movie ticket so hard in a country obsessed with movies?”

India has always had an unparalleled love affair with cinema. Movies here aren’t just a form of entertainment; they’re a cultural event, a family outing, a date night, a social ritual, and for many, even an escape. Yet despite this deep relationship, the process of actually watching a film in a theatre was riddled with frustration.

In the late 1990s, buying a ticket meant standing in serpentine queues outside box offices, often under the sun, only to find the show sold out. Scalping was rampant, and there was no transparency around availability. If you wanted to plan a movie outing, you were left with guesswork and luck.

A Spark from an Unexpected Place

In 1999, Ashish Hemrajani, then a young professional working in advertising, went on a holiday to South Africa. It was there, while listening to a radio commercial about booking rugby tickets online, that a thought struck him with force: if they could sell sports tickets online in South Africa, why couldn’t India do the same for movies?

It wasn’t a grand moment. It was ordinary, like most entrepreneurial sparks. But it stuck. Ashish returned to Mumbai, buzzing with the idea, and soon teamed up with two friends—Parikshit Dar and Rajesh Balpande—to explore the opportunity. Together, they decided to build a company that would change how Indians experienced entertainment.

Building BigTree Entertainment

That idea evolved into BigTree Entertainment, the company that would eventually give birth to BookMyShow. In its earliest form, BigTree wasn’t a consumer-facing platform. It was more of a B2B ticketing solution designed to digitize box office operations for multiplexes. The team envisioned a future where booking a ticket would be as easy as clicking a button—but the reality was far from ready.

At the time, India’s digital landscape was still in its infancy. The internet was a luxury that crawled through dial-up connections. Broadband was rare, mobile phones were basic and mostly used for calls and SMS, and online payments? Virtually nonexistent. Yet despite the odds, the founders forged ahead. They believed the future would catch up to their vision.

Their confidence paid off—at least initially. They raised early funding from JP Morgan Chase, one of the few global firms willing to bet on a digital play in India. With a few million dollars in hand, they started building the backend tech infrastructure to power ticketing systems for theatres. It was a bold, forward-thinking move in a market not yet ready to embrace it.

For a brief moment, it looked like things were going their way.

The Visionary Behind BookMyShow

At the heart of BookMyShow’s story is Ashish Hemrajani, a founder who didn’t just see an opportunity in digitizing ticket sales—he saw a cultural shift waiting to happen. While the world around him was still coming to terms with the internet, Hemrajani envisioned a future where technology could simplify one of India's most cherished pastimes: going to the movies.

Ashish didn’t come from a tech background. He wasn’t a programmer or a product guru. Instead, he brought something just as powerful: a sharp sense of consumer behavior, honed by his early career in advertising and marketing. A graduate of Mumbai’s Sydenham College with an MBA from the University of Mumbai, he had a clear grasp of what people wanted—and more importantly, what frustrated them.

His professional life began in a fairly traditional way. While working at J. Walter Thompson (JWT), one of the top advertising agencies in the country, Ashish developed a knack for decoding how people think and buy. But it was a trip to South Africa that changed everything. While vacationing there in 1999, he heard a simple radio advertisement for online rugby ticket sales. In that moment, something clicked. He saw how frictionless the experience was—and imagined a version of that back home in India, not for sports, but for films.

Most people would’ve left that idea behind with their passport stamp. Ashish didn’t. He returned to India with a fire in his belly and quickly roped in his friends—Parikshit Dar, a technically sharp engineer, and Rajesh Balpande, a finance-savvy chartered accountant. Together, they co-founded BigTree Entertainment, planting the first seeds of what would eventually become BookMyShow.

What made Ashish stand out wasn’t just the idea—but how far ahead he was thinking. At a time when India’s internet was slower than a fax machine and online payments felt futuristic, he was talking about APIs, inventory integrations, and real-time seat selection. He believed that consumer convenience wasn’t a luxury—it was a necessity waiting to be unlocked.

But like many visionaries, Hemrajani’s path wasn’t linear. The early 2000s brought with them the crushing dot-com crash, and BigTree lost its funding almost overnight. Yet even in the face of mass layoffs and shrinking operations, he refused to quit. Rather than burn out or pivot away completely, he leaned into the slowdown—focusing on building long-term tech infrastructure and industry relationships, even if it meant operating out of a small Mumbai flat with just a skeleton crew.

Through it all, Ashish Hemrajani remained grounded. He wasn’t chasing valuation hype or investor buzz. His motivation was rooted in solving a real-world problem that millions of Indians encountered every weekend. His leadership style, often described as calm but relentless, helped BookMyShow weather storms that would’ve sunk most companies.

The Dot-Com Crash: When Everything Changed

Then came the dot-com crash of 2001.

The bubble that had inflated around internet companies burst spectacularly. All over the world, tech startups collapsed, venture capital dried up, and investor confidence vanished. India was not spared. JP Morgan exited its India operations, taking its funding and faith with it.

For BigTree, the crash was nothing short of devastating. Practically overnight, they went from being a promising, well-funded startup to fighting for survival. They had to let go of nearly their entire team, scaling down from over 150 employees to just 6. Offices were shut, projects were shelved, and the grand vision was reduced to a handful of people working from a modest flat in Mumbai.

Most companies would have folded. Many did. But not BigTree.

Ashish and his co-founders chose to stay. Instead of chasing new funding or forcing growth, they did the unglamorous but wise thing—they pivoted quietly. They shifted their focus from building a consumer product to offering software and backend solutions to multiplexes. They helped cinemas digitize their ticketing, manage inventory, and slowly get used to the idea of going online—even if customers weren’t quite there yet.

This was not the storybook rise founders usually dream of. It was slow. Quiet. Even painful. But it was also critical. These years in the shadows taught the team patience, resilience, and an intimate understanding of how the industry worked from the inside out.

Waiting for the Market to Catch Up

For nearly seven years, BigTree stayed in this liminal space—neither thriving nor dying. The company existed in survival mode, sustained by steady B2B work and a long-term belief that the tide would turn.

And slowly, it did.

Between 2001 and 2007, India underwent a silent digital transformation. Broadband internet started gaining traction. Credit and debit card usage began to rise. Online platforms like IRCTC and MakeMyTrip educated the masses on digital transactions and ticketing. Multiplexes expanded from metros to Tier 2 cities, and the urban Indian consumer began expecting convenience, speed, and control.

By 2007, the founders recognized something they hadn’t seen before: the timing was finally right.

The infrastructure was in place. The mindset had shifted. What had once been a forward-thinking experiment now had a real shot at mass adoption. And with that clarity, they re-emerged with a brand new avatar—sleek, consumer-ready, and digitally savvy.

BookMyShow was born.

From Failure to Foundation

It’s easy to look at BookMyShow’s later success and assume it was always on an upward trajectory. But the truth is, its early years were filled with false starts, unexpected detours, and brutal realities. What saved the company wasn’t just its idea—it was its ability to endure. The failure didn’t kill them. It clarified them. It forced them to adapt, learn the industry from the inside, and build the kind of muscle that would serve them in the tougher battles ahead.

This wasn’t just the start of a company. It was the beginning of a culture—one that could take a hit and keep going.

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Chapter 2: Adoption and Growth – From Niche to Mainstream Picking Up the Pieces – The Six-Person Survival Mode

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, it didn’t just take down companies—it wiped out dreams.

For BigTree Entertainment, the fallout was swift and brutal. The funding from JP Morgan Chase disappeared almost overnight. Plans for growth, scale, and product development came to a screeching halt. The team, once over 150 strong, had to be painfully scaled down to just six people.

They shut down their offices. Let go of talented staff. Canceled expansion plans. What remained was a small, tight-knit group holed up in a modest flat in Mumbai, surrounded by uncertainty, pressure, and the sobering realization that they were on their own.

But where others saw an end, Ashish Hemrajani and his co-founders saw a reset.

They knew the consumer market wasn’t ready. India wasn’t yet a country where people bought tickets online. Internet speeds were too slow, credit cards were rare, and the very idea of digital trust hadn’t yet formed. So rather than force a product into a reluctant market, they changed their approach.

They went quiet. But they didn’t stop.

A Strategic Pivot: From B2C to B2B

During this time, BigTree shifted from a consumer-facing platform to a B2B ticketing infrastructure provider. They began offering white-label software and backend ticketing systems to multiplexes, cinemas, and event organizers. It wasn’t glamorous work. There were no app launches or buzzwords or VC headlines. But it paid the bills—and more importantly, it kept them close to the industry they were trying to change.

While the internet wasn’t ready for consumers to book tickets online, theatre chains were desperate for better systems. Many were still running on outdated, manual ticketing models prone to errors, fraud, and inefficiencies. BigTree offered them a lifeline: a tech stack that helped digitize box office operations.

They installed server systems in cinema halls. They trained staff. They fine-tuned booking software. Slowly but steadily, BigTree became a trusted partner behind the scenes—invisible to moviegoers, but invaluable to the industry.

These quiet years—often overlooked in startup stories—were foundational. The team learned how theatres operated, where their bottlenecks were, how show scheduling worked, how footfall changed by time and location, and what customers truly needed—not just what technology could offer.

The Long Game: Building Knowledge While Others Burned Out

For nearly seven years, from 2001 to 2007, BigTree kept its head down and its product evolving in the background. Many other startups of the time collapsed completely or pivoted away into unrelated industries. But BigTree stuck to its original problem statement. They believed that entertainment, particularly cinema, was too deeply embedded in Indian culture to remain offline forever.

This belief became their moat.

When broadband started entering homes, when credit cards became common, when IRCTC made Indians comfortable with online booking, and when e-commerce began warming up consumers to digital payments—BigTree was ready.

By the time the ecosystem matured, they weren’t scrambling to build a product. They had already built it—tested it, refined it, and scaled it quietly in the backend of India’s multiplex boom.

The Rebirth – When Preparation Finally Met Its Moment

By 2007, the world around BigTree had changed—and this time, it was in their favor.

The slow-burning revolution they had quietly waited for was now in motion. Urban India was logging online, and not just for emails or chat. People were booking train tickets on IRCTC, buying flights on MakeMyTrip, and paying bills digitally. Multiplexes were thriving in metros, credit card usage was climbing, and digital literacy was no longer confined to the tech-savvy elite.

Ashish Hemrajani and his team had been patiently watching, waiting—not to catch up, but to strike. They had survived the crash, endured years in obscurity, and spent that time doing the hard, unglamorous work that most startups try to skip. While the world talked disruption, they were in the trenches building foundations.

Now, they were ready.

With quiet confidence, BigTree stepped back into the consumer space. But this time, they weren’t testing an idea—they were launching a product built on real-world insights, years of backend integration, and a deep understanding of the entertainment ecosystem.

They called it BookMyShow.

The name was intentional—simple, action-oriented, and memorable. It was built not just as a ticketing app, but as a platform that reimagined the entire movie-going experience. A place where users could browse shows, read about films, choose their own seats, pay online, and even get updates about upcoming releases—all in one clean, intuitive interface.

And just like that, the company that had once shrunk to six employees in a Mumbai apartment became the face of a new way to watch movies in India.

But this wasn't overnight success. This was years of listening, learning, and laying pipe in the background—waiting for the moment the market was finally ready to meet them where they had always been.

BookMyShow didn’t ride a wave. They helped build it.

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Chapter 3: Reinvention and Rise – How BookMyShow Became a Cultural Powerhouse

When BookMyShow re-emerged in 2007, it wasn’t just with a better product—it was with the accumulated wisdom of years spent building behind the scenes. They didn’t come back with a “version 2.0.” They came back with an entire playbook.

But what truly marked BookMyShow’s transformation from a comeback kid to a cultural cornerstone was what they did after re-establishing themselves. They didn’t stop at survival. They aimed higher—to shape, own, and expand the entire entertainment ecosystem in India.

This chapter is about that era. The era of reinvention. The era that turned BookMyShow from a ticketing app into a lifestyle essential.

Beyond the Box Office: Redefining Entertainment Access in India

By the early 2010s, BookMyShow had become the default choice for cinema-goers across India. But the founders understood something critical: real dominance didn’t lie in owning a product—it lay in owning the occasion.

Movies were just one kind of shared experience. India was a country pulsing with energy—concerts, plays, sports matches, stand-up shows, festivals. Every city had its own rhythm, its own reasons for people to step out.

BookMyShow wanted to be there for all of it.

And so, they expanded far beyond cinema:

• Live concerts like Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, and U2’s first India gigs

• Global spectacles such as Cirque du Soleil and Disney on Ice

• Comedy tours featuring Indian and international artists

• Major sporting events—IPL, Pro Kabaddi, Formula 1, ISL
  

  

They weren’t just selling tickets—they were producing, promoting, managing, and running the entire event lifecycle. Backstage, BookMyShow was building an event production engine. Frontstage, they became the gateway to India’s modern entertainment scene.

In doing so, they did more than expand categories. They changed how people experienced life outside their homes.

No longer were they “India’s ticketing platform.” They had become India’s experience platform.

Mastering the Mobile Moment: Building for the New Indian Consumer

As the smartphone revolution swept through India, BookMyShow saw something others didn’t: this wasn’t just a new device—it was a new behavior.

So they didn’t just launch an app. They rebuilt the company around mobile-first thinking.

Everything became intuitive, lightweight, and personal:

• Smart recommendations based on location, past preferences, and time of day

• Integrated payments that worked seamlessly with wallets, UPI, cards, and net banking

• Push notifications that informed, nudged, and brought users back at just the right moment

Booking a ticket wasn’t a task anymore. It was a habit. One that fit neatly between WhatsApp chats and Instagram scrolls.

And that habit wasn’t just about usability—it was about trust. People knew the app would work. That the seats would be real. That the showtimes were accurate. That if anything went wrong, someone would actually respond.

BookMyShow didn’t just adapt to the mobile age. They defined how Indian consumers expected digital services to behave.

The Pandemic Blow – and the Digital Pivot That Saved Them

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the very heart of BookMyShow’s business vanished overnight. Theatres shuttered. Events disappeared. Social gatherings became a public health risk. For a company built on physical experiences, it was nothing short of catastrophic.

But if there’s one thing BookMyShow had learned, it was how to survive when the lights went out.

Instead of freezing, they pivoted. Fast.

• BookMyShow Online was launched in record time, turning homes into virtual venues. Live concerts, comedy shows, workshops, masterclasses—everything moved online.

• BookMyShow Stream entered the OTT battlefield, but with a twist: no subscriptions. Instead, it offered premium, pay-per-view content for movie lovers who still wanted theatrical-style releases.

• Behind the scenes, they optimized their operations, rebuilt core tech, and refined product workflows—preparing not just for recovery, but for resurgence.

And when the world opened back up, BookMyShow didn’t crawl back. It catapulted back—leaner, sharper, and more ambitious than ever.

Becoming the Infrastructure of Culture

Today, BookMyShow is no longer just a marketplace. It’s an operating system for entertainment in India.

They produce their own events, own their own streaming catalogue, provide backend tech for third-party venues, and support artists and performers directly. They have become part of the infrastructure that powers how Indians enjoy their leisure time.

From a single movie ticket in 1999 to mega stadium concerts in 2025, BookMyShow has built more than a company. They’ve built a relationship with Indian consumers—grounded in reliability, evolved through innovation, and strengthened by resilience.

And in a country where trust is everything, that’s not just a competitive advantage—it’s an unshakable moat.

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BookMyShow: Market Leadership and Financial Milestones

Dominating the Indian Online Ticketing Market

As of FY24, BookMyShow stands as the undisputed leader in India's online entertainment ticketing sector, commanding approximately 75% of the market share. This dominance is reflected in its impressive annual ticket sales, with the platform facilitating the sale of around 180 million tickets.

Financial Performance: A Snapshot

BookMyShow's financial trajectory has been remarkable:

• Revenue Growth: The company's revenue surged by 43.2%, reaching ₹1,396.86 crore in FY24, up from ₹975.51 crore in FY23.
  

• Profitability: Net profit increased by 27.6%, amounting to ₹108.63 crore in FY24, compared to ₹85.1 crore in the previous fiscal year.
  

• Revenue Streams:

  • Online Ticketing: Contributed ₹801.57 crore, accounting for 57.4% of the total revenue.

  • Live Events: Generated ₹454.72 crore, marking a 91.5% year-on-year growth.

  • Advertising and Other Sources: Brought in ₹140.57 crore.

Industry Outlook: A Growing Market

The Indian online movie ticketing services market is on an upward trajectory:

• Market Size: Valued at USD 0.70 billion in 2024.
  

• Projected Growth: Expected to reach USD 1.11 billion by 2033, with a CAGR of 5.22% from 2025 to 2033.

This growth is fueled by increasing internet and smartphone penetration, digital payment adoption, and a growing preference for hassle-free, contactless bookings.