While Salman Khan-starrer Ready ranks highest among overall sales with 10,000 tickets, 2,000 tickets of Ajay Devgn’s latest release Singham have been sold so far. Telegraph pictures

Bhubaneswar, July 22: Gone are the days when one had to stand in ticket queues for long hours and yet miss out on the first day first show of blockbusters.

City-based engineering student Swagat Kar and his friends have made life simple for movie buffs by introducing www.bookticketnow.com, an online site last year. The youngsters redefined the process of booking tickets for movies in Bhubaneswar and Berhampur, which is now just a click away.

“Introducing online booking of film tickets was not easy but we are reaping benefits now,” says Swagat. “A film buff myself, it struck me last year that instead of waiting for hours at the counters and sometimes even witnessing brawls just for the sake of securing tickets, it would have been good if we had an online booking system like they have for multiplexes in many cities,” he says. Swagat, who was in the third year of engineering in 2010, shared the idea with his friends who were excited to hear the concept.

“We kept visiting movie halls right from January 2010. But it took quite a long time to convince them that the process is safe and would generate a good response owing to college students and corporate employees who would prefer online booking,” reminisces Swagat.

“Finally, when the management of one of the theatres was ready, we started off in May last year. Aiming at a big project, we started off with the movie Kites and the response was quite encouraging. Soon, other halls joined in and today, we are happy to have a successful business,” he says.

For every film, both Oriya and Hindi, bookticketnow sells 40 per cent tickets online with around 26 per cent service charges, which includes taxes and bank processing charges apart from the profits.

“We have great sale for the opening day and weekend tickets. Even when the live counters are relatively free on weekdays, we sell up to 300 tickets per day,” says Swagat, who had recently appeared for his final year exams.

Due to lack of awareness among film viewers, last month there was an instance of swindling wherein a cheat sold printouts of one ticket to many viewers. “We got to know of the incident the same night and immediately added some notice of caution on the tickets for the viewers. We have also asked cinema hall authorities to check identity cards when collecting tickets from the viewers,” he says.

According to the team, so far the most number of tickets bought online were for Kiese Dakuchi Kouthi Mate among Oriya films with 600 tickets in the first three days itself. While Ready ranks highest among overall sales with 10,000 tickets, already 2,000 tickets of Singham have been sold for the first day.