Mumbai, May 18, 2026: As geopolitical tremors push companies to rethink fuel use, work-from-home norms, and employee mobility, Cityflo cofounder Sankalp Kelshikar has nudged India’s HR leaders to look at a perk hiding in plain sight: the daily commute.

In a candid LinkedIn note this week, Kelshikar framed the past week’s tension as a real-world stress test for office travel. “Use public transport, carpool, reduce fuel use, WFH,” he wrote, arguing that shared, high-occupancy commute is no longer just a sustainability talking point, it’s an operational hedge.

Founded in 2015 by IIT-Bombay alumni, Cityflo has spent 11 years building a high-occupancy AC bus network across the busiest corridors of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. Buses already run periodically on these routes; the company simply adds capacity as seats fill, keeping fuel use tightly optimised.

The numbers do the talking. According to Kelshikar in his LinkedIn post, nearly 50% of Cityflo’s customers previously drove cars or used cabs. The shift to a shared bus cuts their fuel consumption by roughly 85%.

For HR teams, the pitch lands somewhere unexpected, closer to compensation strategy than CSR. Companies and employees can buy passes directly on the app, which accommodates flex schedules and hybrid work patterns, sparing organisations the overheads of dedicated fleets, parking, or cab reimbursements. “A lot of road still left to cover. But the direction is right,”

Kelshikar wrote, before delivering the closer: “If you’re rethinking employee transport this week, I’d love to talk. This is an employee perk that costs less than a gym tie-up.”

In a year when ESG reporting, fuel volatility, and talent retention are all moving in the same direction, that line may be harder to ignore than it sounds.