Tagit Launches Mobile Ticketing Service in India

It is has all the ingredients to take the movie-mad Indian mobile public by storm. In a country which sees over 4 billion cinema admissions per year, there is a crying need to make the process of booking tickets a lot less stressful for movie goers. Various solutions have been tried before, but none is as smooth and easy as the one Tagit has just launched with PVR, the largest multiplex chain in India, and Airtel, the largest GSM service operator with over 25 million subscribers.

With Tagit, the box office is literally put into the hands of the movie goers. It works as a Java application which can be downloaded by an SMS request. For Airtel subscribers, it is downloadable from the Airtel Live portal, which gives free GPRS access. The application engages the user in a simple, interactive manner. It prompts him for the movie he wishes to see, the cinema he prefers, asks the date and time of the show, then, incredibly, gives him the choice of selecting his seat from a layout of the cinema seating plan which pops up on the mobile screen, and finally, captures his credit card details for making payment. The user then receives a confirmation of his transaction, together with a booking number, which he has to present at the Box Office to collect his ticket.

The system also allows delivery of tickets onto the mobile phone in the form of 2D bar codes, which would then be scanned from the mobile phone at the cinema entrance for gaining admission. It is expected that PVR and other cinema chains operators will adopt this alternative method of ticket delivery soon as it will make the whole process logically more complete, and give movie goers a perfectly seamless and comfortable experience of going to the movies.

Given the fantastic response received so far, after just one week of its introduction, it is clear that this service will set the standard for movie ticketing in India. Tagit's mobile ticketing solution is the first such GPRS-based system which provides end-to-end fulfillment on the mobile phone in an engaging and stimulating way. The application is also able to connect users to multi-media content, such as movie reviews, trailers and songs, which will be downloadable on the mobile phone.

PVR Cinemas mobile ticketing solution is powered by Tagit and built on Mobeix Mobile application middleware by MobileStruct Pte Ltd.

Tagit is a Singapore-headquartered mobile solutions and m-commerce company, established in Sept 2004, and supported by the Infocom Development Authority of Singapore. The India business is driven by its subsidiary, Tagit India Pvt Ltd, whose Chairman is Mr Ranjan Kapur, Country Head of the WPP Group in India.