vehicles. FLIXBUS
Jonathan Welch finds out how Flixbus is faring one year after it first stepped into one of the world’s largest inter-city bus markets: India
It’s a German company expanding into a country half way around the world. When you put it like that, it doesn’t seem all that interesting. But when the German company is the fastest-growing inter-city coach brand on the planet, and the country is India, with one of the largest populations and an inter-city coach market multiple orders of magnitude above that here in the UK, you can see why it’s an interesting story.
The company announced its Indian ambitions at the start of February 2024, with the first services running in the country on 6 February, as part of an initial plan to offer a network of routes connecting 46 cities using Delhi as a hub. Destinations at launch included Ayodhya, Lucknow, Dehradun, Manali, and Jodhpur, with 59 stops and over 200 daily journey options, with a view to subsequently expanding in the south of the country.
The Indian inter-city coach travel market, as the company said at the launch, is one in which Flixbus believes it can add value with its brand and technology. It’s a market estimated to be worth some €30bn annually, making it the second largest in the world, and it’s one in which the popularity of online booking is growing, the operator says, making it ripe for the Flix treatment. Flixbus promised a focus on standardisation and safety for the expected millions of potential users of the new network, which would include overnight sleeper services as well as standard day-seated coaches.
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