IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform in India, has raised $30 million in investment to extend its community throughout smaller towns and cities within the South Asian country. The all-equity Sequence D spherical, led through A91 Companions, values the Noida-based startup at $140 million post-money.
Intercity commute is accelerating in India as extra folks migrate from smaller cities to metropolitan towns for paintings and training.
To satisfy this call for, New Delhi has considerably expanded the rustic’s freeway infrastructure. The nationwide freeway community has greater through over 60% prior to now decade, from 56,723 miles to 90,847 miles, in keeping with Indian govt information.
Railways, whilst in depth, stay capacity-constrained and can’t stay tempo with emerging inter-state commute call for. That makes long-distance avenue commute a an important selection. But, state-run intercity bus products and services are restricted and steadily fall brief on reliability and luxury — an opening IntrCity SmartBus targets to fill.
In contrast to conventional operators, IntrCity SmartBus runs on an asset-light fashion through partnering with native bus homeowners and equipping their automobiles with proprietary {hardware} for real-time monitoring, co-founder and president Kapil Raizada stated in an interview.
The startup additionally centralizes price ticket reserving and course making plans via its virtual platform, which is helping resolve carrier frequency, pickup issues, boarding stations, or even seat configurations in keeping with call for.
To make sure protection and consistency, IntrCity puts educated group of workers — known as “captains” — on board each and every bus, Raizada instructed TechCrunch. Maximum automobiles function washrooms, and the corporate has additionally arrange air-conditioned boarding lounges staffed with group to support the pre-departure revel in.
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“All our buses are cloud-connected,” he famous. “There’s a bus working device, which we’ve constructed up in-house, which displays and manages numerous parameters, together with the CCTV, sound, and temperature ranges.”
Based in 2019, IntrCity SmartBus started as a web based teach ticketing platform beneath the RailYatri emblem. That access level gave the staff early insights into intercity commute habits and unmet call for in road-based mobility, Raizada stated.
As of late, RailYatri contributes simply round 10% of the startup’s general earnings, whilst the SmartBus trade accounts for the remainder 90%, he added.
IntrCity SmartBus operates round 600 day-to-day bus journeys, transporting between 20,000 and 25,000 passengers every day — just about 700,000 monthly. The platform works with greater than 50 native bus operators and runs journeys averaging over 311 miles each and every. About 95% of its products and services are in a single day, catering basically to non-discretionary commute wishes similar to paintings, training, or crucial appointments.
The startup’s conventional passengers are between 20 and 45 years outdated, together with small trade homeowners, running shoes, govt officers, gross sales pros, and scholars.
The startup follows a hub-and-spoke fashion and has recognized 15 to 16 key financial hubs throughout India. It operates in 13 to fourteen of those hubs, spanning 15 states. The community covers all of northern India — from Jammu to Uttarakhand — and far of the south, together with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh.
“A large number of information crunching is going into figuring out what the shopper wishes,” stated Manish Rathi, co-founder and CEO of IntrCity SmartBus. “This comprises choices like what sort of structure a bus will have to have — will have to or not it’s a complete sleeper, or a hybrid with each sleepers and seats?”
IntrCity SmartBus grew its earnings through 67% year-over-year to ₹5 billion (roughly $57 million) within the final fiscal yr. The startup initiatives earnings to surpass ₹7 billion (round $79 million) within the present yr. It’s been “EBITDA-positive” for the previous couple of years and targets to grow to be totally successful this yr.
With the newest investment, the startup plans to move “deeper and wider” in the course of the nation and beef up buyer revel in and protection, in addition to improve its fleet control era.
“One of the crucial larger demanding situations in in bus mobility around the nation that folks have issues about busses. It’s noticed as a lesser cousin to trains and flights,” Raizada instructed TechCrunch. “We need to make busses the most well liked mode of commute in India.”
Greater than 223 million intercity trips have been made in India within the monetary yr 2025, in keeping with a contemporary file through on-line bus ticketing platform RedBus. The field added over 72,000 new intercity routes final yr, in conjunction with roughly 6,400 new buses — increasing capability through an estimated 265,000 day-to-day seats.
Along IntrCity SmartBus, India is seeing a wave of new-age intercity bus startups similar to ZingBus, LeafyBus, and FreshBus. Ecu massive FlixBus additionally entered the Indian marketplace early final yr, signaling rising traction within the house. Nonetheless, IntrCity perspectives pageant as secondary to execution.
“India is an excessively other beast on the subject of avenue commute. If one thing goes to move mistaken, it’ll pass mistaken,” Rathi stated. “We’re no longer a network-first corporate. We’re an operational-excellence-first corporate.”
