As a banker working in south Mumbai — Nariman Point and then Lower Parel — Nikhil Agarwal suffered the pains of the city’s chaotic public transport system for nine years. Trains operating well beyond their capacity, a limited taxi service and a crumbling bus network trying to support an ever-growing metropolis were sure signs that something had to be done to try to ease the commute of citizens not just in the commercial capital but across the country.State-sponsored mass transit systems couldn’t keep pace, private enterprise hadn’t done enough, and dated regulations have not allowed it to do enough to try to fill the breach. Private car ownership had exploded and the surge of taxi aggregators such as Ola (in 102 cities with 20,000 vehicles on its platform) and Uber (which recently announced a $1-billion investment to expand in India) provided the foundation for Agarwal to launch LiftO , a ridesharing venture in Mumbai.LiftO joins a raft of other startups trying to solve India’s worsening issues with urban transport and daily commutes. Existing public infrastructure — including newer options such as the Delhi Metro which ferries three million passengers — are woefully inadequate for India’s working population.

The explosive growth of newer options such as Uber and Ola shows there is a massive need for public transport options, and private enterprise is looking to fill the breach left by state-sponsored infrastructure.



“There are eight lakh private cars in Mumbai…90% of these vehicles are single occupancy,” says Agarwal. “Affordable smartphones, improved mobile data connectivity and GPS have allowed us to build new solutions to solve an old problem.” Analysts say that startups may play a pivotal role in easing this commuting ache.

“Enterprises can play a key role in connecting the dots,” says Jyot Chadha, head of urban innovation at World Resources Institute’s EMBARQ India, a programme for implementation of sustainable urban transport and planning solutions. “They have the skillset to work at the ‘hyperlocal’ level and can leverage changing technology at a pace that is challenging for government to do.”Rather than compete with the government, Chadha believes that these ventures will work alongside public transport and see themselves as part of an integrated transport system. “We are seeing the emergence of disruptive models in four key areas: mobility-on-demand, commuter experience, product innovation and connected mobility,” she adds.If Uber and Ola connected drivers to passengers on their platforms, LiftO’s nascent business wants to connect passengers to each other directly and build a ridesharing network. In a short time, Agarwal is thinking big — he wants his fledgling business to first expand across Mumbai, and then to Bengaluru and the National Capital Region.Ridesharing may be only one way to escape the daily traffic bottleneck. Other entrepreneurs offer their own innovations to try to break the gridlock. For example, Sequoia Capital-backed Shuttl wants to build a transport option that fits between the bottom of the public transport pyramid (trains and buses at as little as Rs 2 per km) and the top (cabs for over Rs 8 a km).



The venture, which started as an inter-city transport idea, pivoted to tackling intra-city commutes in April this year. “There’s a huge gap and an opportunity to build a product for people who can’t afford cabs and don’t want the hassle of a train or bus,” contends Amit Singh, chief executive and cofounder of Shuttl.



“A bus is the safest and most cost-efficient way of moving people around cities and we have added a layer of technology and analytics to what used to be a disorganised space.”

Technology allows companies like LiftO and Shuttl to do much more. Another startup that is trying to leverage a similar set of improvements is Trevo, which also wants to wade into the chaotic market for buses and mini buses to ease the burden of urban commuting “There are around 1.5 million private buses operating today, largely contracted to companies and schools, which are used for barely four hours in a day,” says Mayank Jain, cofounder of Trevo. “We want to aggregate these private buses and provide incentives for drivers and other staff by improving planning (routes frequency and stops) on their services.”The rot in the system is clear to see — in Delhi the state-run DTC had a capital loss of just below $1 billion a couple of years ago and there are few signs things have improved. Trevo wants to provide a cheap option (Rs 5 a km, which though affordable is slightly higher than Rs 3.5 charged by Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation) as well as add-ons such as wireless internet access, phone chargers and on-demand entertainment to commuters.While the cofounders of the Gurgaon-headquartered Trevo have done the hard yards before launching their venture (meeting with 200-plus commuters and 50 operators), the business has made only the slightest dent in the transport network — 30 buses and 1,500 rides to date.Meanwhile in Mumbai, serial entrepreneur Siddharth Sharma is working on a community-driven crowdsourced transit network with his latest venture rBus . “We are trying to build a personalised mass transit system,” he says. The startup, since July this year, has added 20 buses to its platform, completed 600 rides and wants to push more people from spending time in their cars to using more efficient buses.“One bus can account for 40 cars…it is the most efficient form of transport on the roads,” adds Sharma. According to Sharma, the market for buses can be exponentially larger than today and operators can earn 35-40% more incremental revenue by using the rBus platform. “The grimly opaque market for buses is slowly becoming more transparent,” he contends.Part of the challenge for these entrepreneurs may be changing hard-set consumer mindsets. For example, car ownership has been historically an emotional one tied to saving for years and buying a personal vehicle. However, founders of self-drive startups want to break what they call a bad habit — owning a depreciating asset and paying regular fuel, insurance and maintenance bills.



“People under the age of 35 don’t want to own a car,” contends Greg Moran, a New Yorker who has spent the better part of the last three years building his self-drive venture Zoomcar. “There are over 3,000 self-drive cars in India compared to 1,80,000 in China… this space is the next big wave in urban commuting.” Zoomcar has 2,100 cars and expects this to increase to 10,000-15,000 in the next two or three years.





All the technology in the world can’t help companies, however, deal with India’s regulatory haze. If heavyweights such as Uber and Ola have been in a running battle with lawmakers over the legality of their services, others such as HeyTaxi, which aimed to offer bike-based ridesharing services, and Zip-Go, in Bengaluru, discovered they were skating on thin ice.

In July this year, HeyTaxi was forced to suspend its services between Dadar and Colaba in south Mumbai by the city’s Transport Commissioner for running afoul of motor vehicle norms.In Bengaluru, meanwhile, ZipGo saw its services halted on similar grounds. Experts think this needs to change. “Regulatory reform is critical,” argues Chadha. “Our focus must shift from licences and permits to a discussion on the service-level benchmarks we want.”



Across the board, company executives say that regulation is in flux in this fast-evolving market. “Regulation is two or three decades old and outdated for such a fast-changing market,” says Jain of Trevo. “The government is keen to find a way to ease traffic congestion, but regulation needs to keep pace.”

A fluid regulatory environment isn’t the only challenge. Even as they look to scale their ventures, they are keeping a wary eye on larger operators making a beeline for their niches.For example, in the self-drive market, Zoomcar is seeing increased competition from the likes of Myles (from Carzonrent, a company best known for managing corporate car fleets and Easy-Cabs , the metered cab service), while in the ridesharing space, the likes of BlaBlaCar are wading into the Indian market.For the past 10 months, Raghav Gupta has proselytised longdistance ridesharing, snaring customers in towns as distant as Moga in Punjab. In a country with limited inter-city connections, BlaBlaCar wants to be a viable alternative.“Train tickets are either not easily available or unaffordable and buses are uncomfortable,” says Gupta, the country head for BlaBlaCar India. “We also make the trip more affordable by splitting costs.”Elsewhere, especially in Europe, BlaBlaCar provides a far cheaper alternative to trains and buses, since dynamic pricing applies — London to Manchester can cost as much as £80 by train, while a BlaBlaCar seat costs £15.Such elastic pricing, though, isn’t available in India, since train prices are fixed. Instead, BlaBlaCar wants to focus on being a reliable alternative to trains and buses.While the firm is yet to monetise its India business, it has built some traction, with routes such as Delhi-Chandigarh-Delhi and Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai already having 400 to 500 cars operational. “We have seen people use our cars from 700 different locations in India as we improve connectivity to the hinterland,” adds Gupta.Elsewhere Carzonrent made its first fresh foray with Myles, its self-drive business in November 2013. It today has 1,200 cars in 21 cities. Then, it acquired ridesharing startup Ridingo in April this year to expand its range of businesses.“Ridesharing is a natural progression of the self-drive business,” argues Sakshi Vij, chief executive and cofounder, Myles. “We would like to break the existing relationship between Indian consumers and their cars.”Vij believes this market is set to explode and larger players with deeper pockets and better technology will thrive. The Myles business is growing at 35-40% a month and by 2016 should have a fleet of 5,000 cars.In the next four years, the selfdrive market is expected to grow exponentially to 2,00,000 cars, with Myles expected to account for 50,000 of them.In parallel, she wants to grow her rideshare business from a few corporate pilots to a full-fledged service. “We want to eliminate the need for an individual to buy a car and instead provide the same ownership experience, at a lower cost, with a rented vehicle,” Vij adds.The shifting trends in urban mobility are perhaps best seen in the moves of Ola, which began life as Olacabs, but has since looked to build a broader business around moving a billionplus Indians about. It now wants to be a key player in the recast of the urban commute.“We want to be the first choice for a billion Indians,” says Anand Subramanian, a senior director with Ola. “We will continue to build out our taxi aggregation business, but we are also interested in shuttle services between stations and homes and larger commuting options for consumers.”The company is already piloting some shuttle services programmes in Bengaluru and the NCR, and says it will launch a full-fledged service in the coming months. For India’s harassed commuters, this explosion of options couldn’t have come sooner.