Dear reader,
In emerging markets, public transportation is how many people move through cities. As we’ve seen with BusCaro in Pakistan, buses are the backbone of public transportation. They are inexpensive to build and operate, can scale quickly, and run on shared road infrastructure without the need for dedicated tracks.
The simplicity of buses belies a deeper operational challenge. Buses require tight coordination between travellers and bus operators on booking, payment, scheduling.... When this coordination breaks down, travellers are left stranded.
A company solving this in densely populated Bangladesh is Jatri. Jatri builds technology products for bus operators (online ticketing, route tracking, consistent pricing…).
After building for the Bangladeshi market, they’ve expanded to the Middle East with operations in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. On the product side, Jatri has expanded its inventory category to now include chauffeurs and short-term stays.
In my conversation with Aziz Arman, the cofounder and CEO of Jatri, we covered:
- What is the root of the problem with Bangladesh’s bus infrastructure?
- What insights Jatri gleaned from speaking to bus operators?
- The difference between expanding to the Middle East and expanding to Southeast Asia.
- Why expand into chauffeur services when bus operations are larger?
And a lot more. Let’s dive in.
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Biography
Aziz Arman is the co-founder and CEO of Jatri, a startup building a platform for travel and mobility operators, beginning with Bangladesh. Jatri has raised around $7.8 million in venture capital from investors in Singapore, the US, and the Middle East.
Starting in late 2019 in Bangladesh, Jatri has expanded to Saudi Arabia as an entry to the GCC in 2024. In 2025, Jatri expanded into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar. Jatri has recently launched its Middle East brand Saafir, a platform that helps travel businesses book chauffeurs and short-term stays.
How did the Jatri idea originate?
In Bengali, “Jatri” means “passenger.” Bangladesh is a small country with a huge population (~170 million). Many people earn under $300 a month and can only afford public transportation, mainly buses, to travel.
What struck us was the lack of tech supporting this massive ecosystem. You’d see buses packed with people, cash payments everywhere, no schedule visibility, no proper data, yet this system moves over a hundred million people daily.
Source: The Daily Star – Govt reduces bus fare by 3 paisa per km; The Daily Star – New CNG auto-rickshaw fare; GoByTaxi – Bangladesh
(Disclaimer: these are our best guesses from the sources we could gather. These numbers may be imperfect).
That’s how the idea for Jatri occurred. We thought: why not build a platform that makes millions of Bangladeshi travellers' and operators' lives easier?
We saw it as both a need and an opportunity: to bring structure, transparency, and efficiency to Bangladeshi mass transit using technology.
What problems does the average Bangladeshi traveller face?