Prakash Sangam’s response

At the outset, we strongly condemn the incident that took place with Rashmi. We understand that apart from being a clear violation of the law, such incidents are against the principles of equality and right to life and these should be handled appropriately. We also admire and respect Rashmi for bringing this up to the notice of the authorities and us.

We would like to highlight that redBus is a bus ticketing marketplace platform connecting bus operators with travellers. Despite this context, redBus in its capacity as a socially responsible corporate citizen, has always endeavoured to ensure the safety and security of the commuters. It is in light of this that we want to bring to the attention of this forum a few features on redBus to ensure better safety/security of women and other travellers:
a. Whenever any seat is booked by a female passenger, the adjoining seat gets automatically reserved only for female travellers.

b. Ratings and Review of buses collected from passengers have Ratings on Staff Behviour, Bus Quality and Punctuality. These ratings can help travellers make more informed choices on bus service selection. In addition, it gives data points to bus operators to improve their services or in cases, where there is no improvement, we take action leading to termination/blacklisting on the redBus platform.

c. 'Track my Bus' feature pioneered by redBus, where real time location of buses are tracked via GPS installed on buses. Travellers can use this feature to share their ETA (expected time of arrival) with friends and family who can then track the bus location/movement in real-time.

d. A very recent feature that we have added is 'Rest Stops Information'. On buses that have GPSs, we are accurately able to gather information on all the rest stops made by buses where we show the location (on the map) and the duration of the stop of the bus. In a short while, we would also add photos of these rest stops along with Ratings on Hygiene, Safety and Food Quality.

In addition to this, we are also educating bus operators to implement the following initiatives :

1. CCTV cameras - Many buses are now equipped with CCTV cameras. And we are working with bus operators to educate them about installation of cameras in buses.

2. Emergency numbers inside bus – We are also educating the bus operators on visible listing of Emergency numbers inside the buses to be used for emergency scenarios such as rash/unsafe driving, misbehaviour or harassment by staff/other passenger or any other exigency, manned by responsible individuals at the bus operator's end.

3. Women friendly service listing: Operators who comply with the following: Real time bus tracking, CCTV cameras installation, and emergency numbers inside the bus would be marked as women friendly service on redBus listing of services. This is work in progress and would go live shortly.

Finally, as responsible players in the bus travel ecosystem, we are also educating the bus operators to undertake driver/helper training programs and make them sensitive to problems faced by single women, families with children and senior citizens during bus travel and to respond appropriately. We have also undertaken changes at our end to ensure that customer touch-points such as call centre staff are adequately sensitized to serious issues and are able to escalate / resolve complaints appropriately.

We are also reaching out to many of the bus operators listed on redBus, who are critical stake-holders, with this petition to solicit their views on how to make bus travel safer and as hassle-free as possible, particularly for women, and we would be happy to share their feedback too.

We also take on board Rashmi's suggestion on sending tips to women travellers on travel safety and we would work on doing this as soon as possible, including telling the woman passenger the total number of other women travellers on that service.

Any other suggestions are welcome!