Hyderabad: With the city providing smooth road connectivity to not just South Indian States but also Maharashtra, Hyderabad is growing to be a bigger base for bus service providers like IntrCity RailYatri’s Smart Bus. The multi-modal intercity mobility platform, that operates RailYatri as well as Smart Bus service, sees Hyderabad as the largest base for the Southern region followed by Bengaluru and Chennai. The Delhi-based company has 84 IntrCity SmartBus, out of which 40 percent is in the Southern region, and going forward it is hopeful that Hyderabad will form a major chunk of this service.
“Hyderabad connectivity is not just restricted to the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh region but also the neighboring Southern States like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, along with witnessing high demand for Hyderabad to Mumbai route. Over the next six months, we are planning to grow our SmartBus fleet by three times which would be about 250-300 buses out of which 40 percent will be expanded in the Southern States with Hyderabad forming a major chunk,” said Swapnil Tripathi, chief business officer, IntrCity RailYatri.
New normal
In order to cater to the changing needs of travelers who prefer hygiene, cleanliness, and safety in their travel mode, IntrCity RailYatri introduced a slew of measures into its fleet. Digital login via the app and a 360-degree view of the bus before starting the journey along with providing body temperature of the driver and captain of the bus was the first innovation.
“The second key change we made was providing a sanitized private cabin with a digital key was introduced. We also launched these cabins in both sleeper and seat mode so that passengers don’t have to share their seats with other passengers,” said Tripathi.
According to the CBO, the last year was challenging and that was the time when the company went into ideation mode and conducted extensive surveys among its passengers in order to provide these solutions. It re-launched its services in the July-August period and since then it is seeing far better adoption among passengers.
