Zingbus, India’s largest online bus booking platform, steps onto a sustainability journey by partnering with Sequoia-backed Climate Finance startup, Climes. The travel startup has been offering carbon neutralization as an option to their passengers since May of 2022 across their 500+ cities in 17 states boasting a fleet of 350+ buses. At least 65% of passengers have neutralized their carbon footprints through Climes’ API found on zingbus’ checkout page. Passengers have neutralized more than 500,000 kilos of CO2e by contributing towards forest regeneration and other Nature-based Solutions.
Overall, transportation accounts for a fifth of global emissions of which 15% comes from road transport. While road transport cannot be avoided, and still has a high market share in transport and logistics in India, zingbus’ with its high conscientiousness and planet-positive business model is the first in this category to take this leap.
Through this partnership, zingbus users have the choice to neutralize the amount of CO2e emitted during their travel at minimal prices. The Climes’ tech stack calculates the emissions from the bus journey using factors like bus model, seating capacity, and more. For a person traveling from Delhi to Manali, neutralizing their emissions could cost as little as Rs. 3 – which is contributed to verified carbon reduction projects on the Climes platform. In doing so, the passenger is actively engaged in climate action with zingbus and Climes – all in a single click.
To understand carbon emissions, neutralizing 1 kg of carbon emissions is the same as turning off all the electricity in your home for 7 hours. For zingbus, each passenger ride emits an average of 3-5 kgs of carbon emissions. So, every time someone neutralizes their zingbus ride, they save emissions of 21-35 hours worth of electricity!
Prashant Kumar, CEO & Co-Founder, zingbus said, “zingbus is a mobility company, and anyone who is trying to solve for mobility needs to have sustainability at the back of their head. Our first step towards sustainability was to service more passengers per bus per day, so that we can automatically decrease carbon emissions by 15-20%. Secondly, with Climes, we encourage our passengers to neutralize their carbon footprint by paying just a nominal amount. At least 65% of our users have opted for carbon neutrality at checkout ever since we launched this service in mid-2022. Sustainability is the goal that all of us should be chasing together.”
Adding to this, Anirudh Gupta, Co-founder, Climes, said, “As one of the most essential but environmentally detrimental industries, travel and transportation are heavily in need of new and innovative forms of climate action. Companies like zingbus, who are part of our Generation Climate (Gen-C) community, are very much ahead of the curve and leading this transition. As the first bus service in the country to offer carbon neutrality as an option, they are redefining what the future of travel in this country will look like and are driving the shift towards sustainable tourism. Having partnered with multiple brands across the industry, like MakeMyTrip and Roamhome, Climes is working towards offering Indian consumers an end-to-end travel experience that is carbon neutral and sustainable.”
The company also plans to move to electric buses, with around 1000 such buses getting deployed in the next 3-4 years. Climes has partnered with more than 10 brands across industries including Airbus, MakeMyTrip, TEDx, Smartivity, Tamarind Chutney, aastey and more.
