It's interesting to see how the online bus reservation services in India are mushrooming these days. Several Indian startup companies still think that there's room for yet another 'me too' service. After the much hyped acquisition of Red Bus, the pioneer in online bus reservations for ~800 crore Indian rupees (not sure what the actual deal value was), I thought there will be a consolidation of the services and there will be 2-3 major travel companies that will have a total hold over the system. But just a search on Google for the keywords 'bus reservation India' reveals a different story.

There are countless service providers in the domain - redbus continues to be on the top, followed by MakeMyTrip, BusIndia (they claim to be bigger than Redbus), Abhibus, GoiBibo (they acquired redbus), Ticketvala, Expedia, PayTM, KSRTC, Travelyaari, MyBusTickets, Ezeego, OneIndia, Ixigo, TicketGoose, BestBus... the list looks endless. Makes me wonder what differentiating factors do these services provide?

I tried visiting some of these websites and found that there aren't any differentiating factors at all. Most of the service providers have similar interfaces and offer seat selection on some of the operators / routes. But that's all about it. If you don't have a differentiating factor - why start a new bus ticketing service?

I'd like to ask CEans, which online bus reservation service do they frequently use and what do you like the most about the service?