Startup Deep Dive : RailYatri — the train app that now earns most of its money from buses

RailYatri built its name teaching millions of Indians when their train was late. Today nine out of every ten rupees the company earns come from a business it barely planned for: an intercity bus network called IntrCity SmartBus, born one month after a Delhi High Court order in April 2019 declared RailYatri’s own ticketing and catering operations unauthorised.

That reversal is the spine of this story. A company that started as a data feed for train delays now runs as an asset-light bus aggregator doing an estimated ₹496–500 crore in FY25 revenue, still loss-making on paper as recently as FY24, and backed by investors ranging from Blume Ventures at the seed stage to A91 Partners in a 2025 round that valued the business at $140 million.

Quick facts

What they do

RailYatri began as a free information layer on top of Indian Railways: live train running status, seat availability, PNR status and platform locators for a rail network that published almost none of this to passengers directly. Over the following decade it added a transactions layer on top of that information layer — train ticket booking flows, on-train food ordering, and hotel listings for travellers passing through. In 2019 it added a second, now much larger, business under the same parent company: IntrCity SmartBus, a branded intercity bus service that books seats on buses it does not own, running overnight corridors between tier-1 and tier-2 Indian cities. The two brands sit inside one holding company, Stelling Technologies Private Limited, and together serve a customer base the company put at more than 15 million monthly users of its train information product and several hundred thousand monthly bus passengers.

The origin

The founding story is ordinary in a way that is easy to miss. Kapil Raizada, an IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore graduate, had spent more than 15 years across five corporate roles in product management, including stints at GlobalLogic and OnMobile, before he sat for an interview at Amazon in 2011 and did not get the job. He later described the moment as clarifying rather than crushing: if the vast majority of startups fail anyway, he reasoned, then age and seniority stopped being reasons to wait. That “now or never” logic, reported in Forbes India, pushed him and Manish Rathi — a GlobalLogic colleague with a master’s in computer science from Western Michigan University and a production engineering degree from VJTI Bombay — to start building rather than keep interviewing. Sachin Saxena, a Georgia Tech and IIT Kharagpur graduate who had held vice-president roles at GlobalLogic, E2open and Symantec, joined as the third co-founder.

They spent roughly a year building the technology before opening RailYatri to the public in 2013. The insight was narrow and specific: Indian Railways ran one of the world’s largest rail networks but told passengers almost nothing in real time about where their train actually was, whether their seat would be confirmed, or which platform to stand on. RailYatri’s first product simply answered those three questions well. It worked: the app crossed one million downloads and two million monthly active users within its first year, and by late 2016 had been used by more than 20 million people, with roughly 3.5 million active every month, according to YourStory’s reporting at the time.

The struggle years

Two setbacks stand out, both severe enough to threaten the business rather than merely slow it.

The first was legal, and it struck at the heart of the newer, transactional side of the business. In 2017 the Indian Railway Catering and Tourist Corporation (IRCTC) — the state monopoly that controls official train ticketing and catering — filed a complaint alleging that RailYatri was running unauthorised booking and on-train meal services. The case dragged through the Delhi High Court for close to two years. In April 2019 the court ruled against RailYatri, declaring aspects of its ticketing and catering business unauthorised, even as the company’s revenue had been doubling — from ₹5.5 crore in FY18 to ₹12.2 crore in FY19, per Forbes India’s reporting. A company built on being the trusted layer over Indian Railways had just been told by a court that part of what it did on top of that layer was not permitted.

The second was macro and hit less than a year later. In February 2020 RailYatri’s IntrCity arm closed a round of more than ₹100 crore led by Nandan Nilekani and Samsung Venture Investment. Weeks later, COVID-19 lockdowns shut down intercity travel in India almost entirely. “Our revenues came crashing down when lockdowns were imposed during the first wave,” a company representative told Inc42, and the second wave in 2021 delivered what the same report called “another massive blow.” For a business that had just pivoted its future to buses full of overnight passengers, a period in which long-distance travel was banned outright was as close to an existential threat as a two-year-old pivot can face.

• 2017–April 2019: IRCTC complaint and Delhi High Court ruling against RailYatri’s ticketing and catering operations, after revenue had grown from ₹5.5 crore (FY18) to ₹12.2 crore (FY19) (Forbes India).
• February–2021: COVID-19 lockdowns collapse intercity bus and train demand within weeks of a fresh ₹100 crore-plus fundraise; a second wave in 2021 repeats the shock (Inc42, company statement).

The turning point

The single event that reshaped the company was the April 2019 court ruling, and specifically what the founders chose to do about it in the following weeks. “The litigation made us realise that we had put all eggs in one basket,” Kapil Raizada told Forbes India. Rather than fight to preserve the exact model the court had objected to, the company launched IntrCity SmartBus in May 2019 — a bus business with none of the regulatory dependence on IRCTC that had just cost it a court case.

The numbers on either side of that decision are stark. In FY19, the year of the ruling, RailYatri’s revenue stood at ₹12.2 crore, almost entirely tied to the train-information-and-booking model a court had just constrained. By FY20, the first full year after the SmartBus launch, revenue had jumped to ₹51.5 crore — and bus services alone already accounted for roughly 75% of that total, according to Forbes India’s reporting. What began as a defensive diversification became, within a single fiscal year, the larger half of the business. Half a decade later the split has only widened: by 2025 IntrCity SmartBus made up around 90% of group revenue against roughly 10% for RailYatri’s original train products, per TechCrunch’s October 2025 reporting — the exact reversal promised in this piece’s opening line.

The money behind it

RailYatri and IntrCity have raised money in stages that track the company’s pivots almost exactly: seed money for the analytics product, growth capital for ticketing and food, a war-chest round right before the bus pivot needed to prove itself, and now expansion capital for the bus network specifically.

• November 2014: approximately $0.5 million seed round from Blume Ventures, the first institutional capital into the pre-revenue analytics product (YourStory; Canvas Business Model).
• 2015: a pre-Series A round led by Helion Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, with existing investor Blume Ventures participating (amount undisclosed).
• 2016: Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani makes a personal, undisclosed investment — his first check into the company and the start of a relationship that recurs in every major round since (YourStory, 2016).
• 2018: a Series B of roughly $8 million from Omidyar Network, alongside the acquisition of on-train food service YatraChef in January 2018 (StartupTalky).
• February 2020: more than ₹100 crore (roughly $14 million, reported) led by Nandan Nilekani and Samsung Venture Investment, with Omidyar Network India and Blume Ventures returning — closed weeks before COVID-19 lockdowns began (Business Today; Entrackr, February 2020).
• February 2024: a Series C top-up of ₹37 crore (about $4.5 million) at the IntrCity level, led by Mirabilis Investment Trust with Nandan Nilekani’s NRJN Family Trust, Omidyar Network India and US-based Ujamaa Ventures participating, valuing IntrCity at about ₹912 crore (roughly $110 million, reported) post-money (Entrackr, February 2024).
• October 2025: a $30 million (about ₹250 crore) Series D led by A91 Partners, taking the post-money valuation to $140 million (TechCrunch, October 2025; Business Standard, October 2025).

Entrackr put cumulative funding at “over $50 million” as of early 2024; adding the October 2025 Series D takes total capital raised since 2014 past roughly $80 million. Three backers stand out for what they specifically changed:

• Blume Ventures — the first institutional investor in 2014, betting on an analytics product with no transactional revenue at all, before RailYatri had a booking business or a bus business.
• Nandan Nilekani / NRJN Family Trust — a personal backer since 2016 who returned to anchor the pre-COVID February 2020 round and the February 2024 Series C top-up, giving the company a repeat investor through both its worst year (2020) and its recovery.
• A91 Partners — the new lead in the October 2025 Series D, financing the current push toward a larger managed fleet and the company’s stated ₹1,000 crore revenue ambition.

How it makes money

The two brands monetise in different ways, and the split matters more than either brand’s individual pitch suggests.

• RailYatri (train side): commissions on ticket bookings, revenue from on-train food orders through the YatraChef acquisition, hotel booking referrals, and advertising on an app used by more than 15 million people a month. This is now roughly 10% of group revenue (TechCrunch, October 2025).
• IntrCity SmartBus (bus side): an asset-light aggregator model. IntrCity does not own its buses — independent bus operators own the fleet and pay for fuel, tolls and driver salaries, while IntrCity handles demand planning, route selection, dynamic pricing and the booking technology. Net earnings after operator costs are split roughly 50-50 between IntrCity and the operator (Inc42’s “Inside IntrCity’s ₹1,000 Cr Odyssey” feature). This is roughly 90% of group revenue.

On margins: the company told TechCrunch in October 2025 that it has been EBITDA-positive “for the past couple of years” and is targeting full profitability in the current financial year, though no audited net-profit figure has been published to confirm that beyond FY24’s disclosed loss of ₹9.9 crore. The part people tend to get wrong is the ownership model itself: SmartBus looks, from a passenger’s seat, like a bus operator competing with state transport corporations and private fleets. It is not. It is closer to a demand-and-booking layer sitting on top of more than 50 independently owned bus fleets — an aggregator business wearing a bus company’s branding.

The numbers

Consolidated revenue and profit/loss for the RailYatri and IntrCity businesses under Stelling Technologies, in ₹ crore:

• FY22→FY23: revenue grew 2.3 times, from ₹117.2 crore to ₹273.7 crore, while losses shrank 58.5%, from ₹43.9 crore to ₹18.2 crore (Entrackr, February 2024).
• FY23→FY24: revenue grew a further 16%, to ₹317.3 crore, with losses down again to ₹9.9 crore (Inc42, “Inside IntrCity’s ₹1,000 Cr Odyssey”).
• FY24→FY25: revenue grew an estimated 61–67% to roughly ₹496–500 crore — ₹496.1 crore per Inc42’s company profile, “surpassing ₹500 crore” and up 67% year on year per TechCrunch’s October 2025 reporting, which cited the same figure in dollar terms (~$57 million).
• FY23 total expenditure rose 83.4% to ₹298 crore from ₹162.5 crore in FY22, roughly tracking the bus network’s expansion costs (Entrackr, February 2024).

Where the money comes from

The revenue mix has a clear headline split and a less obvious geographic one underneath it.

• By business line: IntrCity SmartBus contributes roughly 90% of group revenue; RailYatri’s train information, ticketing and food business contributes the remaining 10% (TechCrunch, October 2025).
• By geography, SmartBus’s bus ridership and revenue skew heavily south: about 55% from South India, 20% from North India, 15% from West India and the remaining 10% from other regions (Inc42, “Inside IntrCity’s ₹1,000 Cr Odyssey”).
• Operational scale supporting that revenue: roughly 600 daily bus trips, 20,000–25,000 daily passengers and around 700,000 monthly passengers, run through 50-plus partner bus operators across 15–17 states, with about 95% of services running overnight (TechCrunch, October 2025).
• The surprise: a brand most Indians still associate with checking a train’s live status now earns the bulk of its money on the road, and more of that road revenue comes from the south of the country than from the Delhi–Mumbai corridor most people would assume dominates intercity bus traffic.

The risks

• Regulatory and legal exposure: the company’s own history shows a core business line can be ruled unauthorised with little warning — the April 2019 Delhi High Court order followed a 2017 IRCTC complaint over ticketing and on-train catering, and cost RailYatri a franchise it had spent years building (Forbes India). Any future service that brushes against IRCTC’s statutory monopoly carries the same tail risk.
• Dependence on third-party operators: SmartBus owns no buses. Its fleet, driver quality and on-time performance depend on more than 50 independent operators under a 50-50 revenue-split arrangement that competitors such as NeuGo, FreshBus and FlixBus can replicate with similar or thinner take rates, limiting how much pricing power IntrCity can exercise over its own service quality (Inc42, “Inside IntrCity’s ₹1,000 Cr Odyssey”).
• Revenue concentration in a single, competitive segment: with roughly 90% of group revenue now sitting inside the intercity bus business, the company’s stated EBITDA-positive status (TechCrunch, October 2025) has not yet translated into a disclosed net profit — FY24’s most recent filed result was a ₹9.9 crore loss — leaving an aggressive fleet-expansion target dependent on continued external funding rounds like the October 2025 Series D (Entrackr; Inc42).

The takeaway

The useful lesson here is not that RailYatri survived a lawsuit. It is that the court ruling did not just remove a line of business — it removed a false sense of security about which line of business actually mattered. RailYatri had spent years optimising a train-information product that, by its founders’ own account, had put “all eggs in one basket.” Losing a legal fight over that basket is what forced a diversification the company had no obvious reason to attempt while things were going well. The businesses that survive a near-death moment are rarely the ones that fought hardest to preserve what a regulator objected to; they are the ones that used the setback as permission to build something adjacent that the original product had never required them to try.

Frequently asked questions

What does RailYatri actually do?

RailYatri provides live train status, seat availability, PNR tracking and platform information for Indian Railways passengers, alongside ticket booking, on-train food ordering and hotel listings. Its parent company, Stelling Technologies, also runs IntrCity SmartBus, a separate intercity bus booking business that now generates the larger share of group revenue.

Is RailYatri profitable?

Not at the net level based on the most recently disclosed filing: FY24 showed a loss of ₹9.9 crore, down from ₹18.2 crore in FY23 and ₹43.9 crore in FY22. The company told TechCrunch in October 2025 that it has been EBITDA-positive for the past couple of years and is targeting full profitability in the current year, but no audited FY25 net result has been published.

Who owns RailYatri and IntrCity SmartBus?

Both brands sit under Stelling Technologies Private Limited, founded by Kapil Raizada, Manish Rathi and Sachin Saxena. Manish Rathi serves as CEO. Investors include A91 Partners, Nandan Nilekani (through personal investment and the NRJN Family Trust), Blume Ventures, Omidyar Network India, Samsung Venture Investment and Mirabilis Investment Trust.

How much funding has RailYatri raised, and at what valuation?

Entrackr reported cumulative funding of over $50 million as of February 2024. A further $30 million Series D in October 2025, led by A91 Partners, valued the company at $140 million post-money, per TechCrunch and Business Standard.

How is IntrCity SmartBus different from a regular bus operator?

IntrCity does not own its buses. It partners with more than 50 independent bus operators who supply the fleet and cover fuel, tolls and driver costs, while IntrCity handles route planning, pricing and the booking platform, splitting net earnings roughly 50-50 with each operator, according to Inc42’s reporting.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Forbes India, “Manish Rathi and Kapil Raizada: Chugging along for the long haul” (founders’ backgrounds, origin story)
• Forbes India, “How we survived: Betting big on buses” (IRCTC litigation, Delhi High Court ruling, FY18–FY20 revenue)
• Entrackr, “RailYatri posts Rs 274 Cr revenue in FY23; losses shrink 58%”, February 2024
• Entrackr, “RailYatri’s parent IntrCity raises $4.5 Mn more in Series C”, February 2024
• Inc42, “RailYatri — Funding, Revenue & Investors” company profile, 2026
• Inc42, “Inside IntrCity’s INR 1,000 Cr Odyssey” feature
• TechCrunch, “IntrCity SmartBus lands $30M at $140M valuation to deepen its grip on India’s intercity travel market”, 29 October 2025
• Business Standard, “IntrCity SmartBus secures Rs 250 crore as India’s intercity travel booms”, October 2025
• Business Today, “IntrCity by RailYatri raises over Rs 100 crore in round led by Nandan Nilekani”, February 2020
• StartupTalky, “RailYatri – Company Profile” success story
• YourStory, “Nandan Nilekani-backed RailYatri grew 400pc in 2 years”, 2019, and 2016 funding report

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