Problem/Objective

Buses are the most common and preferred mode of transport across both rural and urban areas in India. While the ease of availability and the affordable prices are the primary reasons for preferring such journey, there are multiple challenges affecting the bus transportation system. From waiting for buses to buying a ticket, there are numerous hassles associated with a simple journey. While the easy answer is booking an Uber or Ola, the aam admi might not be so privileged to book a joyful ride. Having realized this, Vinayak Bhavnani, Mohit Dubey, Priya Singh Dubey and Dhruv Chopra wanted to change all of this, and make the intercity bus experience digitised, comfortable and easy for Indians.

Solution/Approach

Chalo (previously known as Zophop) was launched in 2014 in Mumbai with the focus on improving existing public transport with technologies. One of the ideas was building a multi-modal trip planner that can provide suggestions to users on the best mode of public transport.

One of the first tech stacks the Chalo team developed was on live tracking - a monumentally challenging aspect of bus transport in India. This helps passengers plan their trips efficiently. The ETA algorithms provide passengers information on the bus route and time of arrival. Soon after, the team went on to introduce digital payments through the Chalo app, and more recently introduced the NFC-based touch-to-pay Chalo Card that works as an integrated solution for passengers to buy tickets, make payments or use a QR code to travel. For conductors, they provided PoS machines that had a long battery life, high transaction volume ability and structurally sound to withstand tough environments. The team essentially works with transport operators to integrate all elements - GPS tracking on the bus to software solutions on the cloud and mobile applications for the users, end-to-end.

In addition to developing ETA algorithms, live tracking and extensive data-driven prediction engines, Chalo also introduced a Seat Availability Feature last year that would indicate how many seats the bus had during a trip. This was done after installing cameras onboard buses that helped provide data on seat availability and also enabled easier and accurate audits of bus journeys.

Impact/Implementation

A 10–15-day pilot on a bus route was initiated which was a success. The team spends a considerable amount of time and effort to improvise on early version of its app. On average, there is a new version released with improvements every 2 weeks that saw additions such as emergency SOS, live trip sharing and multiple languages. At present, Chalo is present in 23 cities and works with many state transportation divisions such as WBTC Kolkata, DTC Delhi, KSRTC Kerela, TNSTC Tamil Nadu, ASTC Assam, AMTS Ahmedabad, KMRL Kochi and AICTSL Indore to name a few.

Officials believe that the app will increase the dependency of commuters on the public transport system which may help in reducing the number of cars on road.