Operator Agreement

Last updated: 29 September 2026

This Agreement is between PathYatra, currently operated by its founders Abhinav Mandal and Abhishek Mandal and you, the bus owner or operator, and applies in addition to our Terms & Conditions. Where this Agreement says something more specific about operating a bus on PathYatra, this Agreement applies.

1. Our relationship

You are an independent business. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, franchise, agency or employment relationship between us. You decide your routes, your timings, your fares and who you employ. We provide software and a booking channel.

When a passenger books a seat, the contract to carry them is between you and the passenger. We facilitate that booking and, for online payments, collect the money on your behalf for settlement to you.

2. What you must have before you take bookings

• A valid permit for each bus and route on which you carry passengers.
• A current fitness certificate for each vehicle.
• Valid motor insurance covering passengers.
• A valid pollution-under-control certificate.
• Drivers holding a valid licence of the correct class, with a valid badge where required.
• Any registration or licence required of a transport business in your state.

These are your legal obligations under the Motor Vehicles Act and the rules made under it. Uploading a document to PathYatra does not transfer that obligation to us, and does not mean we have verified its validity beyond a reasonable check. You must keep every document current and upload the renewal before the old one expires.

We may suspend bookings on a bus whose document has expired. This protects passengers and protects you, and we will not treat it as negotiable.

3. Accuracy of what you list

The bus type, seat layout, amenities, boarding and dropping points, timings and fares you publish must be accurate. If a passenger is sold a sleeper and given a seater, that is a misrepresentation, and repeated instances can lead to removal from the platform.

You must honour a confirmed booking at the fare confirmed. You may not demand extra money on board for a seat already paid for.

4. Your staff

Conductors, drivers and other staff you add are your employees or contractors, not ours. You are responsible for hiring them, paying them, supervising them, verifying their licences and removing their access when they leave.

You must tell your staff, before you add them, that PathYatra will process their name, contact number, role, licence details, verification outcome, ticketing activity and — while they are on an active trip — their device location. That is a legal requirement, not a courtesy: you are the one with the relationship to them, so you are the one who must inform them. The detail is set out in the Privacy Policy.

Location is collected only for the duration of an assigned trip and stops when the trip ends. PathYatra must not be used to monitor a staff member outside their working trip, and we do not provide a feature to do so.

5. Fees, commission and the platform charge

First month free on your first bus, for new operators. The online commission subsidy is a commercial concession and may be varied or withdrawn on reasonable notice.

6. Settlement — including the cash set-off

Online booking money is collected by PathYatra, through our payment partner. Cash is collected by the bus operator or their conductor, directly and never passes through us.

Your settlement is initiated as soon as the trip is marked complete, by instant settlement through our payment partner. We do not hold funds longer than 2 days.

Because we never handle the cash, commission on cash bookings is recovered from your online collections. Your payout is worked out as:

• Online booking collections for the trip
• less 2% commission on those online bookings
• less 5% commission on the cash bookings for the same trip
• less any balance carried forward from an earlier trip
• less any refunds, chargebacks or agreed adjustments

Read the next part carefully before you sign up, because it has a real consequence: if most of your bookings are cash, the commission owed can exceed the online money available to deduct it from. When that happens, recovery follows this order and no other:

1. Recover what the online collection can cover. We deduct commission only up to the online money actually collected for that trip. A settlement is never turned into a demand for cash out of the operator's pocket.
2. Carry the rest forward to the next trip. Anything still owed becomes a carried-forward balance and is deducted from the next trip settlement. If that trip is also cash-heavy, the balance simply carries again.
3. Roll any remaining balance into the subscription invoice. If a balance is still open when the bus's subscription due date arrives, it is added to that invoice and collected with the subscription. The cycle then starts clean.

Two commitments follow from that. First, we will not ask you for cash to cover commission — recovery only ever comes out of online collections we already hold, or out of a subscription invoice already due. Second, a settlement will never be turned into a negative payout: the worst case for any single trip is that you receive nothing from it and the balance moves to the next one.

Every deduction is itemised in the operator's app: online collections, commission on online bookings, commission on cash bookings, anything carried forward, and the balance still outstanding. If a figure looks wrong, raise it with the settlement reference and we will reconcile it with you line by line. Worked examples, including a cash-heavy trip, are in the Payments, Commission & Settlement policy.

7. Taxes

You are responsible for your own registrations, returns and records. We will issue invoices for our fees and, where the law requires us to collect or deduct tax on a transaction, that will be shown separately on your statement.

8. Refunds, cancellations and chargebacks

Cancellation and refund rules are set out in the Refund & Cancellation Policy. Where you cancel a trip or fail to run a service, the passenger receives a full refund and the cost of that refund is borne by you. Where a chargeback is raised, the amount and any gateway charge are adjusted against your settlement while it is investigated.

Cancelling trips repeatedly at short notice damages passengers and the platform, and can lead to suspension.

9. Safety

You must comply with the Safety Policy. In short: no overloading, no unlicensed or intoxicated driver, no overspeeding, working emergency exits, and immediate reporting of any accident or serious incident. Safety breaches are the one category where we will act first and discuss afterwards.

10. Data protection

Passenger data you see through PathYatra — names, contact numbers, boarding points — is given to you for the purpose of carrying that passenger. You may not use it for marketing, sell it, share it, or retain it after it is needed. You must keep it secure, and limit access to staff who need it.

If passenger data is lost, leaked or misused while under your control, tell us immediately. This is a joint problem, and a delay in telling us makes it worse for both of us.

11. Brand use

You may say you are a PathYatra partner and use our logo in the form we provide, while this Agreement is in force. You may not alter the logo, register a similar name or domain, or imply that PathYatra operates your buses. See the Copyright & Intellectual Property policy.

12. Suspension and termination

You may leave at any time by giving notice, subject to honouring bookings already confirmed and settling anything outstanding. We may suspend or terminate for breach of this Agreement, expired vehicle documents, safety failures, fraud, or persistent passenger complaints.

Except where safety or fraud requires immediate action, we will tell you the reason and give you an opportunity to fix it. On termination, confirmed bookings are honoured or refunded, and any settlement balance owed to you is paid after lawful deductions.

13. Liability between us

You are responsible for the carriage of passengers and for claims arising from the operation of your buses. We are responsible for the platform, for settling your money correctly, and for handling your data as described. Neither of us can exclude liability that the law does not permit to be excluded. See Disclaimer & Limitation of Liability.

14. Changes

We may update this Agreement with reasonable advance notice for material changes. If you do not accept a change, you may terminate before it takes effect.

15. Governing law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of India. We will try to resolve any dispute with you directly first; the escalation route is in Grievance Redressal.

16. Contact

Email support@pathyatra.com or call +91 91200 53901. Support hours: Mon–Sat, 10am – 7pm IST.