If you’ve had the chance to travel on some of India’s most common Volvo bus routes, you probably already know about PressPlay. The startup, which provides used to provide rented tabs to travellers for on-the go entertainment, has now gulped in a massive $2.2 Million seed round led by Sequoia Capital, and has moved to a different travel entertainment model.
PressPlay earlier worked on a rented tab model. It used to give you those Chinese tablets for a minimal rent, thus allowing you to browse through the content it made available on its tablets. The content included movies, games, television series etc., all sourced through its content providing partners.
However, the company has now announced that while it will continue to offer the same content, it no more requires a separate PressPlay device to do so. The startup is now looking to set up exclusive entertainment wi-fi networks within luxury buses which would allow users to get offline entertainment at dirt-cheap prices. A user can simply connect to the PressPlayWi-Fi network within the bus and enjoy all of its content on his/her own smartphone/tablet.
Talking to The Tech Portal exclusively regarding how PressPlay aims to use this freshly raised capital, Anand Sinha, co-Founder of the travel entertainment startup said,
We would be using funds to further improve our current product by investing more in technology and talent. We are scaling up our tech-team, and looking to build our product and human capital team. Funds will also be used for geographical expansion.
Though PressPlay’s tab-renting model obviously proved to be capital intensive in nature, the startup has still seen substantial growth in past six months. PressPlay claims to have entertained over 100,000 passengers across various routes, primarily in luxury Volvo buses. It also boasts of 50,000 users per month with more than 40,000 minutes of content being consumed daily. And just to add, I also happen to be one of those whom PressPlay quite satisfactorily entertained.
Another huge advantage which Pressplay currently enjoys, is its absolute monopoly over the business. The startup currently doesn’t have many competitors in the field, which may further bolster the prospect of it going a long way ahead.
The startup was co-founded by two ex-Zomato employees Anand Sinha and George Abraham, who were country heads at Zomato before they quit their jobs and got together to start up PressPlay.
