Aggarwal chose the joint-venture route. No one believed it would work, says Aggarwal. “But once our first few buses rolled out in February this year and elicited such great public response, there was no looking back.”

The buses are colour-coded according to routes, the staff are trained in etiquette by a management agency, the buses run from 7 am to 11 pm and are out the next day washed, cleaned and air-dried from the yard after ICTSL staff checks them everyday.

The collector says Indore will have 96 such buses by the end of the year and a fleet of 500 in five years. With another Rs 98 crore coming to Indore under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, the city plans to start construction of designated bus lanes for a complete Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) with the help of IIT Delhi.

The national Capital, Delhi, has been discussing the scheme for four years and just about managed to sneak in six buses last November. And it took Indore just nine months to put the scheme on tracks.

There will soon be more lessons for big cities from Aggawal’s Indore. Next in line is a dial-a-cab service to replace the 15-year-old tempos on the Indore roads. While Nagar Sewas have not yet been phased out, Aggarwal hopes the market will force them out.

The word is spreading fast. Indore is now being consulted by Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Jaipur, Kota, Udaipur, Rourkela and Raipur. Soon a World Bank team will be here to study the scheme.