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With so many highway movies doing the rounds, sojourning from city to city and state to state feels like a romantic prelude to a long <keyword id="6374782" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="journey">journey</keyword> of self-discovery – till reality strikes. And just like a movie, the reality can be multilayered – varying from bad roads to gasping traffic and minimal road safety. But we promised you relief from those travelling conditions the next time we return with our <keyword id="2053047" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Open-roads">Open Roads</keyword> series. And here we are, with more information about a whole new bunch of <keyword id="2074695" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Intracity-and-inter-city-expressways">intracity and inter-city expressways</keyword> that not only reduce <keyword id="4251245" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Commute-time">commute time</keyword> but also reshape a country’s landscape, <keyword id="34412" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="economy">economy</keyword> and way of life. In the last slideshow of this series, the journey begins from the <keyword id="44875" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="West-coast">west coast</keyword> and goes down south. 
 As we have mentioned before, expressways are limited-access roads designed for high-speed traffic. The economic impact of an <keyword id="2074705" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Expressway-network">expressway network</keyword> criss-crossing the country is all too obvious and the <keyword id="6404450" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Ministry-of-Road-Transport-and-Highways">Ministry of Road Transport and Highways</keyword> (MoRTH) has already recommended a total <keyword id="2074707" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="E-way-network">e-way network</keyword> of about 18,637 km in the country. Development work is being done in three phases and is scheduled to be completed by 2022. During the Interim Budget, <keyword id="6355261" type="POSITION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Finance-minister">Finance Minister</keyword> <keyword id="43940" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="P-Chidambaram">P Chidambaram</keyword> also told the Parliament the road network in the country witnessed over sevenfold increase at 3.89 lakh km over the past decade. 
 Does that mean we may soon see an <keyword id="2074709" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="E-way-ecosystem">e-way ecosystem</keyword> similar to the interstate system in the US? Given the obstacles in terms of <keyword id="6364579" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Land-acquisition">land acquisition</keyword>, <keyword id="414903" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="fund-crunch">fund crunch</keyword> and <keyword id="2074714" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Slow-implementation">slow implementation</keyword>, it’s definitely going to take some time. Meanwhile, hop into the driver’s seat and go off exploring some super-fast roads you have not travelled yet. After all, it’s a journey with no end… and wheels will always need roads. 
 
Image: Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images

Be It Intracity Or
Inter-city, These 5 Expressways Make Travelling A Breeze

New Delhi, Feb 27 () redBus is planning to expand its bus ticketing business globally and aims to garner 35 per cent revenue of this segment from overseas operations over the next 3-4 years, a top company official said on Wednesday. The company, which is part of the Nasdaq-listed MakeMyTrip group, currently garners just around 10 per cent of its bus ticketing revenues from five international locations -- Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Peru and Colombia. redBus's overall annual revenues from the bus ticketing vertical, including India and international operations, stood at around USD 85 million. "We are looking to scale up international business and expect around 35 per cent of the revenues to accrue from overseas locations in the next 3-4 years," redBus CEO Prakash Sangam told . He said the company is currently focussing at Latin American and Asian countries to expand its base globally. redBus launched operations in Singapore and Malaysia in 2015. It acquired a majority stake in Peru-based bus ticketing platform Busportal in the subsequent year. With this acquisition, the company launched operations in Peru followed by Colombia. When asked to comment on the domestic bus ticketing business, Sangam said the segment faced some slowdown since September last year but expressed hope that things will improve in the next fiscal. "If there is improvement in the economy over the next 3-6 months it will be beneficial for us as well. On the positive side though, with new expressways being built and overall road infrastructure getting better, we expect growth to continue," he added. Besides, favourable regulations on the part of the government would also help in the growth of the sector, Sangam said. "There has been talk about contract carriage permits and one nation one tax regime. If such things happen then it would help the sector," he added. redbus, which is the world's largest online bus ticketing platform, saw its bus ticketing business grow by 38 per cent in the third October-December period of the current fiscal. Sangam said the company is also eyeing incremental growth in the bus ticketing business with the expected increase in online bookings going ahead. "We have tie-ups with 23 state transport corporations. Online booking segment currently remains very small. It is just around 12 per cent of the overall bookings. If online bookings grow, it will automatically help us," he noted. redbus, which came into being in 2006, till date has globally sold more than 180 million bus tickets and has customer base of around 20 million users. The Bengaluru-based firm on Thursday launched rPool, a car pooling/bike pooling platform for intra-city commute in Delhi-NCR region. It has already launched the service in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. As part of the initiative, office goers can avail and offer rides in their personal cars and bikes while commuting between home and workplace. rPool can be accessed directly from within the redBus mobile app. "We would focus on 8-10 big cities in the first phase. These cities have huge population of people who commute on daily basis," Sangam said. He further said: "If we can get to one lakh rides in next 1-2 years, it will be a significant figure." When asked how the company would generate business from the vertical, Sangam said they would charge a small commission in the future as they are yet to figure out the amount. MSSMKJ

redBus eyes revving up bus ticketing revenues from overseas operations

The silicon valley of India, Bengaluru, is too noisy and and perhaps even over-hyped. We aren’t saying this, but the start-ups based out of that region claim as much. So, what are they doing about the situation? A few of them are quietly shifting their base from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=coimbatore">Bengaluru to Coimbatore</a> to avoid the hullaballoo of the state capital and focus on quality. Some of them include Dhruv Kumar of online medical advice platform, iCliniq who shifted to Coimbatore 3 years ago after his 2 year stint in Bengaluru. 
 
"I wanted to be out of all the noise and focus on building a quality product," said Kumar. "There are events all the time and the place is flooded with funding stories. Those days, we thought we were a tech startup and did not focus enough on the health and business side." 
 
A much-focussed development and the wait for the product to mature have been rewarding for him. iCliniq now has more than 1,000 doctors on its platform and they have so far addressed tens of thousands of health issues. It gets a large portion of revenue from the US and Europe. 
 
"Entrepreneurs are celebrated in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/indian-govt-wants-more-indian-airlines-to-take-up-international-routes-says-civil-aviation-minister/articleshow/43165558.cms">Coimbatore</a>," the 27-year-old told ET, cheerfully. The cotton-growing region saw its first industries in ginning and moved on to make garments, machinery, automobile and many ancillary products. It is often called the 'Manchester of South India', drawing comparison with the first industrial city. 
 
Several young entrepreneurs like Kumar, who started up in Bengaluru are shifting to Coimbatore. Do-PartTime, a part-time job discovery portal, is another example and one of the reasons for the shift was talent retention. "Every company has a dynamic workforce, which frequently shifts, and a static workforce with loyalty. In a place like Coimbatore, the teams stick around," said Kumar. 
 
Coimbatore has pleasant weather conditions like Bengaluru and is seeing its fair share of startup activity. The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Know-why-GAP-HM-chose-Delhi-over-Mumbai-and-Bangalore/articleshow/47328005.cms">Coimbatore c</a>hapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a non-profit consortium that promotes entrepreneurship, has identified 47 active startups. 
 
One of the catalysts for them is the educational institutions in the region that have helped establish a sound technical ecosystem, TiE-Coimbatore President Selvakumar said. 
 
There are five incubation centres in and around the city, almost all of them set up by a technical education institution. PSG STEP, the incubation arm of PSG Institute of Technology, was established in 1998, much before any other college, including IIM Ahmedabad, did so. 
 
The centre incubates startups in IT, electronics and mechanical streams from Coimbatore. NanoTechnolgy was added to the list recently. 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/be-it-intracity-orinter-city-these-5-expressways-make-travelling-a-breeze/Hosur-Road-Elevated-Expressway-Bangalore-Karnataka/slideshow/30985057.cms">Also Read: Be It Intracity Or Inter-city, These 5 Expressways Make Travelling A Breeze</a> 
 
(Image: Thinkstock)

You Searched For "Intracity expressways" and got 3 results

Be It Intracity Or Inter-city, These 5 Expressways Make Travelling A Breeze

Sanghamitra Mandal

redBus eyes revving up bus ticketing revenues from overseas operations

PTI

Move over Bengaluru, Coimbatore is the new start-up city

BI India Bureau

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