Bus start-ups take a slow ride to next stop, but may soon gather speed

Mass mobility services have struggled to take off, but there are signs the signal could finally turn from yellow to green

Last week, something slipped under the radar. Indian company Commut was acquired by Dubai-based ride-hailing unicorn Careem. There was not even an eyebrow raised and barely any newspaper covered it. Truth be told, there was hardly any cash involved in that deal. Careem was essentially picking over the bones of a company that had shuttered. The Dubai-based company took the team and the tech. Gurugram-based Shuttl took on the operations and the employee database. 

What is Commut? It is a bus aggregation service. A company that functions just like Uber and Ola but it aggregates buses and exists on the