IntrCity SmartBus lands $30M at $140M valuation to deepen its grip on India’s intercity travel market

IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity autobus level successful India, has raised $30 cardinal successful backing to grow its web crossed smaller cities and towns successful the South Asian nation. The all-equity Series D round, led by A91 Partners, values the Noida-based startup astatine $140 cardinal post-money.

Intercity question is accelerating successful India arsenic much radical migrate from smaller towns to metropolitan cities for enactment and education.

To conscionable this demand, New Delhi has importantly expanded the country’s road infrastructure. The nationalist road web has increased by implicit 60% successful the past decade, from 56,723 miles to 90,847 miles, according to Indian authorities data.

Railways, portion extensive, stay capacity-constrained and cannot support gait with rising inter-state question demand. That makes long-distance roadworthy question a important alternative. Yet, state-run intercity autobus services are constricted and often autumn abbreviated connected reliability and comfortableness — a spread IntrCity SmartBus aims to fill.

Unlike accepted operators, IntrCity SmartBus runs connected an asset-light exemplary by partnering with section autobus owners and equipping their vehicles with proprietary hardware for real-time tracking, co-founder and president Kapil Raizada said successful an interview.

The startup besides centralizes summons booking and way readying done its integer platform, which helps find work frequency, pickup points, boarding stations, and adjacent spot configurations based connected demand.

To guarantee information and consistency, IntrCity places trained unit — called “captains” — connected committee each bus, Raizada told TechCrunch. Most vehicles diagnostic washrooms, and the institution has besides acceptable up air-conditioned boarding lounges staffed with unit to amended the pre-departure experience.

“All our buses are cloud-connected,” helium noted. “There is simply a autobus operating system, which we person built up in-house, which monitors and manages a batch of parameters, including the CCTV, sound, and somesthesia levels.”

Founded successful 2019, IntrCity SmartBus began arsenic an online bid ticketing level nether the RailYatri brand. That introduction constituent gave the squad aboriginal insights into intercity question behaviour and unmet request successful road-based mobility, Raizada said.

Today, RailYatri contributes conscionable astir 10% of the startup’s full revenue, portion the SmartBus concern accounts for the remaining 90%, helium added.

IntrCity SmartBus operates astir 600 regular autobus trips, transporting betwixt 20,000 and 25,000 passengers each time — astir 700,000 per month. The level works with much than 50 section autobus operators and runs trips averaging implicit 311 miles each. About 95% of its services are overnight, catering chiefly to non-discretionary question needs specified arsenic work, education, oregon indispensable appointments.

The startup’s emblematic passengers are betwixt 20 and 45 years old, including tiny concern owners, trainers, authorities officials, income professionals, and students.

The startup follows a hub-and-spoke exemplary and has identified 15 to 16 cardinal economical hubs crossed India. It operates successful 13 to 14 of these hubs, spanning 15 states. The web covers each of bluish India — from Jammu to Uttarakhand — and overmuch of the south, including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh.

“A batch of information crunching goes into knowing what the user needs,” said Manish Rathi, co-founder and CEO of IntrCity SmartBus. “This includes decisions similar what benignant of layout a autobus should person — should it beryllium a afloat sleeper, oregon a hybrid with some sleepers and seats?”

IntrCity SmartBus grew its gross by 67% year-over-year to ₹5 cardinal (approximately $57 million) successful the past fiscal year. The startup projects gross to surpass ₹7 cardinal (around $79 million) successful the existent year. It has been “EBITDA-positive” for the past mates of years and aims to go afloat profitable this year.

With the latest funding, the startup plans to spell “deeper and wider” done the state and heighten lawsuit acquisition and safety, arsenic good arsenic upgrade its fleet absorption technology.

“One of the bigger challenges successful in autobus mobility crossed the state that radical person concerns astir busses. It is seen arsenic a lesser relative to trains and flights,” Raizada told TechCrunch. “We privation to marque busses the preferred mode of question successful India.”

More than 223 cardinal intercity journeys were made successful India successful the fiscal twelvemonth 2025, according to a recent report by online autobus ticketing level RedBus. The assemblage added implicit 72,000 caller intercity routes past year, on with astir 6,400 caller buses — expanding capableness by an estimated 265,000 regular seats.

Alongside IntrCity SmartBus, India is seeing a question of new-age intercity autobus startups specified arsenic ZingBus, LeafyBus, and FreshBus. European elephantine FlixBus besides entered the Indian market aboriginal past year, signaling increasing traction successful the space. Still, IntrCity views contention arsenic secondary to execution.

“India is simply a precise antithetic beast erstwhile it comes to roadworthy travel. If thing is going to spell wrong, it volition spell wrong,” Rathi said. “We’re not a network-first company. We’re an operational-excellence-first company.”