The Road Less Travelled: Reflections on Building OurBus Bharat – COO Lav Kush
OurBus Bharat COO Lav Kush reflects on the company’s first 141 days, highlighting its rapid growth, customer-centric approach, and efforts to bring structure to India’s fragmented intercity travel sector.
On 24th November 2024, we set out on a bold journey, one that would take us deep into the heart of India’s intercity travel ecosystem. Our mission was simple, but not modest — to build the country’s most loved long-distance bus service.
What followed was a masterclass in grit, innovation, and conviction in the face of complexity.
Today, just 141 days later, I pause to reflect not merely on what we’ve achieved, but on what we’ve had to overcome to get here.
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A Landscape Both Familiar and Formidable
The intercity travel sector in India is paradoxical. It’s vast, indispensable, and used by millions every day, yet it remains deeply fragmented, plagued by outdated practices and systemic inefficiencies. Success here does not come easily.
It must be wrestled from a landscape that resists change at every turn. The challenges were, and remain, real. From operators slow to embrace reform, to entrenched offline sales lobbies guarding their turf; from law enforcement decisions that defy logic, to a maze of RTO permissions influenced by local gatekeepers—we have encountered every flavour of friction.
Aggregators like us, who bring transparency, structure, and data-driven decision-making, are often treated as threats in markets long accustomed to informal arrangements.
Yet, we persevered, not by pushing against the system, but by engaging with it. We showed operators a more viable model, one that rewards professionalism and trust.
We brought fairness to sales practices, integrity to pricing, and accountability to the customer journey. Most importantly, we proved that better business is possible—and profitable.
Milestones that Matter
In just under five months, we’ve grown from idea to impact. Some numbers illustrate the scale of that transformation:
- 38 buses now on the road, including 4 electric buses, across 100+ cities in 8 Indian states.
- Over 50,000 passengers have travelled with us—many becoming loyal advocates.
- Consistently top-tier ratings across OTAs, with customer satisfaction scores in the high 90s across voice, chat, and platform feedback.
- From metro corridors to tier-2 and tier-3 markets, our network has expanded rapidly—without compromising on safety, punctuality, or experience.
These are not vanity metrics. They reflect a deeper truth – that passengers are responding to a different kind of service—one that treats them with dignity, respects their time, and puts consistency ahead of shortcuts.
But these numbers, impressive as they are, only tell part of the story. They speak to our growth. They don’t quite capture the learning curve, the late nights, the firefights, or the philosophical debates on the kind of company we wanted to build.
Culture as Our Compass
At the heart of OurBus Bharat is a culture rooted in learning, not hierarchy. We’ve built an organisation where “figure it out” is not a brush-off—it’s a mindset.
We didn’t bring in experts with all the answers; we nurtured generalists willing to ask better questions. Hiring was deliberate and disciplined. We welcomed 79 new team members through a highly targeted, in-house process. We prioritised operators who valued systems over shortcuts.
Our buses were reimagined in close collaboration with bodybuilders, and we built operations from the ground up in cities where we had no playbook—only commitment and curiosity.
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Lessons from the Road
Operating in India means dealing with the unexpected—and often the unreasonable. You learn that a bus impounded by an overzealous official can derail a day’s plan.
That a broken tail lamp can become an excuse for harassment. That trust, once lost, is almost impossible to regain with passengers.
Not every initiative met our standards from the outset. Some routes were introduced ahead of full readiness; a few vehicles initially fell short of our quality benchmarks; and certain partners did not align with our operating philosophy.
Yet these early learnings strengthened our resolve. We established robust feedback loops, empowered teams to make informed, real-time decisions, and consistently anchored our actions around the traveller’s experience.
What Comes Next
We are just getting started. In the weeks ahead, our fleet will grow and so will our footprint. We are on track to expand to 80+ cities, launch new routes in the north and central belts, and increase our chassis count significantly. Electrification is high on our agenda—we launched EV bus before any of our competitors.
Parallelly, we are developing an AI-first GDS system that will allow us to offer smarter routing, real-time fleet tracking, and dynamic pricing—features that will define the next generation of intercity travel.
And through it all, we will remain obsessive about quality—across maintenance, customer service, and every single touchpoint where the passenger interacts with OurBus Bharat.
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In Gratitude and With Resolve
This journey would not have been possible without the unwavering commitment of our teams across supply chain, operations, people experience (HR), customer experience, technology, finance, legal, marketing, and our frontline staff. You have not merely built a company—you have fostered conviction, culture, and credibility.
To our early partners who placed their trust in us, the cities that welcomed us, and the customers who continue to choose us—your belief has fuelled our momentum.
OurBus Bharat is more than an enterprise. It is a demonstration that a different way is possible in India—that trust and transparency can thrive in a landscape long shaped by opacity.
That placing the customer at the core, underpinned by disciplined execution, can drive transformation, even on the most unpredictable roads.
Here’s to the journey ahead—challenging, ambitious, and full of promise.
The article was originally published in our magazine, The Bus Insider, on April 18, 2025.
