Shuttl, the urban mobility startup launched its operations in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, on Thursday, enabling citizens in the city to reserve a seat on Shuttl bus using its app.
Chennai is the sixth city in the country where Shuttl has expanded its footprint, after Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad. This launch aligns with Shuttl’s pursuit of easing pollution and congestion in cities that have poor urban mobility characteristics.
According to recent studies, Chennai has a legacy of dealing with severe traffic and congestion issues. Due to the limited road capacity and infrastructure, the city has the highest density of vehicles on road, compared to any other city in India. Also, the city ranks fifth in carbon emissions from the transport sector among 54 South Asian cities.
Shuttl thus sees a big opportunity in Chennai to transform a car-centric city into a bus oriented one by offering assured seat, AC environment, demand-adaptive route, and befitting schedules for the office commuters.
Currently the company operates around 100 buses with service over 2000 rides daily on 20 key routes in Chennai and aims to double the scale connecting most of the residences and offices in Chennai, within a year.
Talking about its services in Chennai, Amit Singh, co-Founder and CEO, Shuttl said: “We have witnessed a huge demand for a comfortable daily commute option from office-goers in Chennai and thought of launching in the city. Our demand-adaptive routes and schedules align well with commuter needs and drives rapid adoption amongst commuters. Shuttl not only offers a quality stress-free ride to commuters at affordable rate, but also creates a positive impact on environment and road congestion.”
The buses are equipped with real-time GPS tracking and advanced safety features. By moving people most efficiently, Shuttl offers an urban mobility alternative that is affordable, cleaner, and greener and utilizes limited road resources judiciously.
Shuttl currently serves over 90,000 rides per day, saving 132 tonnes of carbon dioxide, taking 26,000 cars off the road each day through its fleet of over 1,700 buses across 6 cities. The compamny claims that 57% of Shuttl’s users earlier used cars instead of buses and 38% of its users are women, adding to the safety perception of Shuttl.
The company was founded by two IITians- Amit Singh and Deepanshu Malviyia and is funded by investors such as Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Amazon, and Dentsu.
