Culture builds brands: redBus CMO Pallavi Chopra on 11 years of lessons

Back in 2014, when Pallavi Chopra was preparing for an interview at redBus in Hyderabad, its CEO, Prakash Sangam, boarded a bus from Bangalore, where the company is headquartered, to meet her in person.

“He wasn’t just selling the category, he was living it,” Chopra recalls on LinkedIn as she marks 11 years at the online bus and train ticketing platform. She joined redBus as senior brand director; today, she serves as its chief marketing officer.

She considers it a milestone that when people think of bus travel, they think of redBus. “Over the years, I’ve learnt that brands aren’t built in a single campaign. They’re built layer by layer — through actions, consistency and resilience,” she notes.

Chopra shared eight key lessons from her 11-year journey with the brand:

1️⃣ Solve a real problem – The best brands begin by tackling what others overlook. For redBus, it was trust in bus travel.

2️⃣ Supply + Product + Marketing = Brand – “Bus yaani redBus” resonated only because the product delivered and supply was reliable.

3️⃣ Listen to the unsaid needs – Features like seat selection, live tracking, and wake-up alarms created delight, offering a first-world experience in a third-world reality.

4️⃣ Resilience builds brands – The pandemic brought business to zero. But the team stayed united, protected its people, and emerged stronger.

5️⃣ Go local to go big – From “Chup Tempat Dengan redBus” in Malaysia (where it is the No. 1 brand) to “MP ke kone kone ka safar karo redBus par” in India, hyper-localisation drove scale.

6️⃣ Scale creates trust – Last quarter, redBus sold 35 million bus tickets globally. On Independence Day weekend alone, over 500,000 Indians travelled via redBus in a single day. Numbers aren’t just scale — they’re promises kept.

7️⃣ Culture builds brands – Chopra’s own hiring interview reflected this. When she was in Hyderabad, CEO Prakash Sangam travelled by bus from Bangalore to meet her. He wasn’t just selling the category — he was living it. “Culture isn’t what you say, it’s what you do. And that became a reason to join redBus,” she says.

8️⃣ Human connections matter most – Chopra recalls the story of an HR head who once met an auto driver who refused his fare. The reason? redBus had helped him find a last-minute bus to see his ailing father one last time. For him, redBus wasn’t just a platform — it was a lifeline.

“And maybe that’s the answer. What makes a brand a brand is human connection,” Chopra concludes.