New Delhi, Mar 16 (IANS): As the bus market is picking up and evolving in India, online bus ticketing platform redBus CEO Prakash Sangam on Saturday said that digitisation has played a major role in getting more bus bookings from non-metro regions.

According to Sangam, non-metros are now contributing to two in three bookings from sources. However, this figure was different before Covid-19.

"During Covid-19, rapid digitisation happened, but people were not travelling then. Now, when people are travelling again, we are seeing this trend, where the digitisation in the smaller towns is really helping, and a lot more of our bookings are coming from non-metros," the CEO told IANS during an interaction.

From April to December last year, redBus sold 68,893,000 tickets. Bus ticketing increased by 33.8 per cent (year-over-year) in the third quarter (Q3) of FY24, according to the company.

Furthermore, Sangam stated that 80 per cent of the business is based in the West and South, owing to evolved policies, road infrastructure, and other factors.

When asked about the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in redBus systems, the CEO said that they are using the technology in a few applications.

"Ability to take customer input both in the form of voice and text in their natural language, interpret that query and compose a response also in the form of almost a human-like response, is a good capability that AI models are giving us and resulting in better customer satisfaction scores than our current processes," Sangam said.

The Indian inter-city bus market is expected to rise to Rs 688 billion ($8.6 billion) by FY26, according to travel analytics firm VIDEC.