Inter-city mobility brand, ItnrCity has joined hands with Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), leading commercial vehicle manufacturers to launch inter-city buses, pre-fitted with mobility operating system (OS), which includes a suite of applications, namely the Operator Dashboard, Crew App, and IOT-based Fleet Analytics.
The partnership will foster the adoption of technology in the mobility sector while also providing benefits to bus operators. Under this partnership, DICV has crafted a holistic 'buyer assistance package', exclusively for operators associated with IntrCity. It includes special financial incentives and AMC packages for operators.
DICV-made BharatBenz buses procured under this partnership will also have exclusive service and maintenance plans that help operators reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Sharing more information, Manish Rathi, Co-Founder, IntrCity in an exclusive interaction with ETTravelWorld said that the small and medium sized bus operators find it difficult to adopt technology as well as struggle to get suitable benefits from OEMs directly.
The partnership will help bus operators across India to procure a new bus and start earning from Day 1 itself, as a part of IntrCity SmartBus fleet. Here are excerpts from the interview:
ETTravelWorld (ETTW): How will this partnership strengthen the IntrCity portfolio? What is your roadmap for expansion and plans to start operations in new locations?
Manish Rathi (MR): We are adding 50-70 buses monthly to support our expansion plans and it is important that we have quality buses from reputed OEMs available with operators and they comply to our technology and bus body specifications requirement. This partnership will ease up supply and fleet adoption across India. We are currently running over 180 buses across India
and plan to reach around 600 buses by June 2022.
We are currently present in 14 states and may add couple of more states but most of the additions will happen in these 14 states across North, South and West India.
ETTW: How many operators do you have on your platform? Are you operating in the B2B arena as well?
MR: We currently work with 40+ bus operators spread across the North, South and West regions of India. We have small and medium-sized bus operators working with us presently. We keep adding new operator partners in our fleet monthly besides new buses from current partners.
ETTW: What are your plans and strategy for next year? How do you plan to market and promote yourself in the industry?
MR: We are expanding at a rapid pace and currently attract more than one lakh travellers every month. Recently we crossed a loyal base of more than five lakh travellers who take our buses frequently. We started in North India and are very strong across UP, Punjab, Himachal followed by Rajasthan and MP.
We already have a strong base in the South, with 270- plus active routes, which connect tier two and tier three cities like Vijayawada, Coimbatore, Ernakulam, Tirupa ti, Madurai, Visakhapatnam, Nagercoil, Guntur and Pondicherry to Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Our West market is growing rapidly across Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa besides connectivity with Southern states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
ETTW: How do you envisage the future of bus travel in India, especially in the post-Covid-19 era when travellers are more concerned about safety and security?
MR: Our vision is to make inter-city buses the default choice of Bharat travellers who currently prefers trains over buses. The highway expansion has paved the way to solve inter-city mobility and it can only happen through ground transport i.e., buses.
We lead this category and have pioneered the concept of SmartBus which is enhancing the traveller experience. We see that few more regional or PAN India brands like us will also grow and hence Bharat traveller will have the choice of a leader brand along few more choices of inter-city buses for every inter-city route of India.
ETTW: How is your business model like? What kind of new services you are planning to offer?
MR: IntrCity is a technology-based mobility brand, and we operate on an asset-less model. We partner with bus operators to provide consumers with a safe, punctual, and reliable travel experience every time. Further, these operators own the buses and hire a driver and add it to the SmartBus fleet.
Simply put, operator (bus, driver, permits, licenses) + IntrCity operating system (technology, IoT, SOPs, lounges, Captain, consumer platform) = high Net Performance Score (NPS) and better fill rate. We have established IntrCity Smart Bus Lounges, an industry-first effort, to provide consumers with a safe and convenient boarding experience.
A consumer IntrCity app provides them real-time bus tracking, ETA of destinations. Apart from that, we have a Command Center that creates realtime bus feeds, driving speeds, and CCTV footage 24X7
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