Chalo is India’s #1 bus transport technology company built with the core purpose of making travel better. With operations in 65 cities and powering 4 billion rides every year on over 30,000 buses, Chalo is solving a real-world problem that affects hundreds of millions of people and creating one of the world’s largest mobility companies along the way.
How large is the problem?
Buses are the single-largest mode of transport. They account for 48% of all public transport trips in India and more in other countries. Compare this with 8% of trips on taxis, and just about 2% on metros. People in our country spend $20 billion on bus tickets annually. However, each bus commuter spends the equivalent of 8 days a year waiting for a bus, and bus operators have losses running into hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
What are we solving?
We aim to make travel better for everyone. Today we do so by improving the experience of taking city buses. Chalo users wait 30 minutes less each day, travel safer with contactless digital tickets, and even save money with Chalo Super Saver plans. By adding reliability and convenience to the city bus system, we kick start a virtuous circle, where happier commuters mean more rides which in turn means more revenue for our bus operator partners, which means better services for commuters. Our most important KPI is the revenue uplift achieved. We have demonstrated an increase of up to 70% in bus ridership in Chalo cities, enabling some operators to be profitable for maybe the first time in this business.
How we do it
We work in partnership with bus operators to deploy our proprietary technology - GPS, Electronic ticketing devices, the Chalo App, the Chalo Card, and the entire back-end tech platform to support all this. By deploying an end-to-end solution, we are able to power a unique experience. Over time we have understood the value of expanding our scope of work as well as leveraging the power of the data generated by our platform to help operators with operations such as route optimisation, crew management, and revenue maximisation.
We have developed expertise for not just the issuance of mobile tickets and closed-loop cards, but also for accepting payments. Our team has also worked on developing Electronic Ticketing machines that could work in low/no internet connections and have instructions in multiple languages.
Our operations are wise, deep, and intensive – buses run 24/7 and that means so do we. We process more than 80 million unique data points daily. We count among our staff, experienced software developers, operations and supply chain experts, transport specialists and also GPS technicians, and bus conductors. We told you it was complicated!
What’s in store for 2025 and beyond?
We love buses and believe that they run better on technology, rather than fuel. Armed with India’s #1 bus tracking app, and India’s #1 bus travel card, we are going to do a lot more of what we currently do. We are taking Chalo to even more Indian cities and expanding our tech offering. We are currently implementing pilot projects that enable passengers to tap or scan themselves into and out of buses, just like in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. We have also recently launched India's largest implementation of NCMC cards in buses, and this is coming to more cities. We have also expanded our presence in the premium bus market in Mumbai. Branded as the Chalo Bus, the fleet of comfortable premium buses in Mumbai is addressing an entirely new audience segment and redefining office and airport commutes. We have also begun operations in 3 international countries - The Philippines, Thailand, and Fiji and are expanding our global presence.
Still more?
The benefits of providing a great mobility solution go beyond time and money. A bus can take 30 cars off the road, reduce hundreds of tonnes of emissions, improve safety, increase household savings, and lead to a significant improvement in quality of life. The opportunity to build a company comes rarely, the opportunity to build a company that can so dramatically impact the lives of millions, comes once in several lifetimes. If that opportunity does come knocking, you better be prepared to grab it with both hands and then give all of yourself to it.
We will be frank, we are still very young as a company and if you were to join us, lots of things will still be work-in-progress, but that’s exactly why we are looking for individuals to take up challenging roles across the company to not just run, but solve, build, and grow Chalo.
Hop onto the ride if you want to be a part of the digital transformation of bus transport in India.