LG's L K Gupta joins Pilani Soft Labs' redBus as CMO

Lakshmikant Gupta, former chief marketing officer, LG Electronics India has joined redBus, the flagship brand of Bengaluru-based bus ticketing company, Pilani Soft Labs, as chief marketing officer.

Gupta, who spent more than five years at LG, says about his move to redBus, in an official communiqué, "E-commerce and digital marketing are the next major frontiers that will spur consumer acquisition and retention. There's tremendous potential in the growing but still largely unorganised $3biion bus ticketing market. The task of building redBus as a category defining brand is exciting and poses immense professional challenge."

An MBA from IMT Ghaziabad, Gupta began his career with IMRB in 1996 and served as associate project director for five years. Later, he shifted to Gillette and served there for nearly a decade. He joined LG Electronics India (the Indian arm of the Korean giant) as vice-president and chief marketing officer in 2007.

Established in 2006, Pilani Soft Labs (PSL) is a Bengaluru-based company. Investors in the company include Seedfund, Inventus Capital and Helion Venture Partners. The company has 26 offices and offers services across 24 states of India. Its products include redBus.in (the consumer facing bus ticketing company), BOSS (it stands for 'Bus Operator Software System' and is an ERP given to bus operators) and SeatSeller (an inventory distribution platform that caters to over 10,000 agents who use it to sell bus tickets).

Through these three products, Pilani Soft Labs claims to have contributed largely to the conversion of the unorganised bus travel industry into an organised one, by catering not only to bus travellers but also to bus operators and bus agents.

Some of the features on the redBus site are user reviews/tips that help customers make an informed choice of the kind of bus they should choose and 'virtual bus stops', where customers can see a photograph of the boarding point with accurate GPS coordinates of that point.