The 8th edition of the biannual professional bus and coach exhibition Busworld India will be powered by ASRTU, Association of State Road Transport Undertakings, the official national body of public transport operators in India.
Association of State Road Transport Undertakings is an apex coordinating body working under the aegis of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways Govt. of India. ASRTU has 62 members who collectively are operating 150,000 buses and serve 70 million passengers a day, providing an efficient, economic, safe and reliable public transport facility in urban, hilly and rural areas across the country.
Out of a vivid wish to unite forces between the operators (ASRTU) and the bus manufacturers and their suppliers, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in January 2018 by Mr. Anand Rao, Executive Director of ASRTU, Mr. Didier Ramoudt, President of Busworld International and Mr. Rajan Sharma, General Manager of Interads Exhibitions.
This collaboration fits perfectly into the Busworld vision to encourage the bus and coach development in all of its host countries and regions. Busworld actively proceeds this vision by organising its exhibitions and congresses, bringing together the manufacturing industry, the operators, the authorities and the international Busworld Academy network of knowledge experts in various fields.
In concrete terms, this collaboration means that ASRTU will hold its yearly member conference during the next edition of Busworld India on the exhibition premises. ASRTU and Busworld will collaborate closely in putting together an interesting programme that addresses the specific local issues of the bus market in India combined with best cases and interesting takeaways from other parts of the world that can contribute to inspire and uplift the Indian bus situation.
Mr. Ramoudt proudly said: “We are very happy with this collaboration. For us this is a first step forward in being the connection between the Indian public transport industry and the bus manufacturing industry. We strongly believe in bringing people together to improve the general quality of the output, meaning better passenger transport solutions for the Indian people.”
“The Public Transport in India is dominated by buses through State Road Transport Corporations. As many as 150,000 buses are operated by the seventy public sector State Transport Undertakings (STUs) and Transport Corporations. These buses operate around 12.1 billion kilometres annually and carry more than 70 million passenger trips per day. This is nearly three times the passengers carried by Indian railways” Mr. Rao explained.
“The Co-operation with the Busworld India 2018 edition shall provide the Transport Industry with an exciting opportunity to share ideas that will help in achieving common goals and meaningful objectives. In light of our country’s current economic growth, it is now more important than ever to bring all the stakeholders together and align our efforts for moving forward with changes in bus based public transport requirements” he added.
“This Memorandum of Understanding for Busworld India 2018 formalizes the working relationship with Busworld that we have already built and it will strengthen that relationship around our common goals” Mr. Rao concluded.
Busworld India powered by ASRTU will be organised in the BIEC in Bangalore from 29 till 31 August 2018. More information about the ASRTU Conference powered by Busworld will soon be available.