Thinking inside the bus, Cityflo continually enhances the shared urban commute

Thane headquartered Cityflo’s unique travel solution is getting popular by the day

Starting in March 2019, Times of Urbania has covered the township, Thane city, places outside Thane, and topics of general interest. 

From this issue, we shall feature Urbania’s residents and their businesses. 

Read till the end to know about Cityflo’s Urbania connection – there is more than one!

My friend Ravikumar spent his career working in metro cities, and one of his favorite quotes is that “we would not be in cities if not for our jobs.”  To add a corollary to Ravi’s comment, “most urban professionals would love their jobs “if not for the commute.”

All Indian cities have a commuting problem as none of them has the infrastructure for comfortable mass transport of lakhs of its residents daily.  Local trains, municipal buses, metro trains, bus rapid transport system (BRTS), taxis, and auto-rickshaws are the available commuting choices to Indian city commuters.  However, cheap public transport options have low comfort, uncertainty, and poor customer service.  In recent years, a slew of innovative urban transportation companies like Cityflo has begun to change and revolutionize the daily travel of thousands of Indians.

Starting in 2015, Cityflo pioneered an urban commute that was higher priced (than public transport) but offered greater comfort and excellent customer service.  Starting as an app to choose private buses, they evolved to offer their buses for travel with first-time features for city commuters.

A miniature Cityflo bus scale model

Cityflo buses are the best-in-class BharatBenz 917/1017 that can easily accelerate even while going over flyovers and have airline-like interiors.  Cityflo buses have seats that you can recline on, push back and sideways, and mobile phone charging points.  The large glass windows of Cityflo buses let in natural light for a pleasant travel experience though the blue curtains also allow privacy.

The Cityflo app lets you choose your travel journeys and opt for one ticket or a week or month’s booking (like the famed Mumbai suburban train pass).  Cityflo deducts a nominal fee for single ticket cancellation and lets the weekly or monthly ticket holders unlimited changes and free cancellations.  In addition, Cityflo travelers can choose and modify their seats and change their starting and ending stops and the bus timings.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cityflo was a great commuting option.  They continued their services, complying with government regulations (and letting their app users provide health and work information declarations).  For a while during 2020, I traveled on Cityflo buses from July to December, mostly on journeys that allowed only one of two passengers in a seat row. 

Cityflo would mark the empty seat with a sign on the headrest that indicated the seat was not for use.  In such journeys with limited bus capacity, you had to pay double the fare as Cityflo had to recover its costs from half the passengers a bus could accommodate.

Post-COVID-19 pandemic, Cityflo saw a surge in its popularity as commuters flock to it for its hygienic interiors and for ensuring the better personal safety of travelers in comparison to other public transport modes.  In June 2022, Cityflo is so popular that you can’t easily get tickets on its rides from or to Thane, heading out to Mumbai office destinations daily.  Their CEO Jerin Venad told me yesterday that Thane residents were now booking passes for two months at a time for fear of not getting tickets.

Cityflo - the Next Edition

Cityflo is more than just an app or a fleet of air-conditioned buses, as there are others of the same kind.  However, Cityflo stands apart from its competition of thoughtful customer service and vibrant business culture.  All its employees continually engage with riders to ensure the latter’s smooth daily journeys.

The Cityflo app offers a bus chat on which you can contact their team to resolve any issue before or after the journey.  Sometimes, you will have Cityflo employees call you when you are on their bus to make sure they have addressed your concern.  Their in-house phone number is a great help when you miss a bus or have forgotten your belongings on their bus.  You always get a resolution to your queries from the Cityflo customer service team, unlike what happens with app-taxis which bar customers from calling them.

Cityflo is set to make its bus journeys even more comfortable by modifying its seating and other interior features.  At a bus-build-reveal event on June 3, 2022, at Bandra’s Pioneer Hall, which I attended, Cityflo unveiled to select customers a prototype bus with the seats and features they propose in the future.

Cityflo is a great company that continually listens to its commuters and lets the latter co-evolve the company’s offering.  Knowing that commuters spend 2-3 hours of their daily time on Cityflo buses, the Cityflo team continually enhances its already superior journey experience.

Cityflo’s new buses will have a magazine rack near the driver’s seat and umbrella storage near the fire extinguisher slot at the front of each bus.  In addition, two seats will have an armrest in between (missing in the current buses) though who can use it is a decision two neighboring passengers must make.

The seat back of new Cityflo buses will have a grab handle (for safety), a hook to hang objects, a magazine rack, and a USB charger.  In addition, an adjustable memory foam neck rest (not a headrest like in airline seats) will offer a great sleep experience to passengers, many of whom rest during their bus journeys.  The hard seat back allows passengers great comfort even during long journeys, combined with seat foam and neck rest. 

A very thoughtful seat feature is the seat user staying in place even during sudden stops (if the driver brakes the bus suddenly) because the seat prevents the travelers from slipping forward.

Cityflo has recently expanded its operations to the Delhi-NCR region and now serves more than seven thousand urban Indian commuters.  They have about two hundred buses and are rapidly expanding their bus strength to become twice to thrice the current strength in 2022.  Their long-term plans include having thousands of buses across Indian cities.

Cityflo has a close association with Rustomjee Urbania.  Before 2020, Cityflo operated South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai buses starting and ending at Azziano.  They will restart such trips that start and end at Urbania in the future.

One of the six co-founders and CEO of Cityflo (of which four are currently directors at the company), Jerin Venad, is an Azziano resident in the same building where we stay!  You can watch Jerin in this video, On building Cityflo for Urban India, to convince you to choose Cityflo over your private car.

In addition to Jerin, our neighbors Sudhanshu Mishra and Sarwar Chahal are two other Cityflo employees at Azziano. So we thus have three Cityflo employees at our Azziano building!

Times of Urbania wishes the Cityflo team success in its mission to redefine the urban Indian shared commute!  We look forward to boarding Cityflo buses from Azziano again soon.