1968.
A Bengaluru advocate named S. Narayana Bhatta bought a bus.
He had attended a Sathya Sai World Conference at Dharmakshetra in Mumbai, and was struck by the bus he travelled in. He came home and bought one. The first trip was devotees to Puttaparthi. Sathya Sai Baba boarded the bus, blessed it, and named it Sathya Jyothi.
That is why the company carries the name, and why the logo carries the symbols of five faiths.
He ran the company from his home in Srirangapatna, then from his home in Bengaluru after 1972. His son, S.N. Krishna Chidambara, a civil engineer, took it from one bus to fifteen hundred. Geetha Chidambara, a physicist by training, runs the finances. Their son Pramod, an electrical engineer from BITS Pilani, runs strategy, technology and operations.
Three generations. One business. Same city.
In that time Bengaluru became a different place — Jayanagar farmland became Jayanagar, tech parks appeared where there was nothing, and a city of a few lakh became a city of over a crore. We moved people through all of it.
And through COVID, when the corporate commute stopped for a year: no EMI was defaulted, no moratorium was taken, drivers were paid, and the vehicles were ready the day the offices reopened.
The route.
One bus. Sathya Jyothi.
Bengaluru.
First office, Jayanagar 4th Block. Employee transportation begins. First client, Otis.
SST Chambers, the head office.
School transportation begins.
1,500+ vehicles. 10,000 students. 1.5 lakh passenger trips a day.
The people.
S.N. Krishna Chidambara
Chief Executive. Civil engineer, BMS College of Engineering. Grew the company from one bus to over 1,500 vehicles.
Geetha Chidambara
Chief Financial Officer. Physicist. Financial discipline that kept the company standing through COVID without a missed payment.
Pramod Kumar Chidambara
Strategy and Operations. Electrical engineer, BITS Pilani. Runs technology and operations.
- Jayanthi BLeisure Travels · 30+ years
- Kushraj PatilCorporate and School Transport · 20+ years
- Rama Prasad AMarketing and Sales · 20+ years
- Rajeeva LochanaMaintenance · 20+ years
Shivakumar H — Admin, Billing and Statistics · P Ramesh · Nagaraj D N · Vasudeva · Punith Kumar V · Vijay Kumar R · Harsha Kumar B N — operations, ten to twenty-two years each.
More than two hundred years of running vehicles in Bengaluru on this page.
- 1,500+vehicles
- 300+staff
- 10facilities
- 3offices
- 50+women on the roads
SST Chambers, Jayanagar 5th Block.
SST Zhub, opposite the ITPL staff gate.
Kuvempunagar.
Recognised, and by whom.
Documents available on request.
The people who do the work.
The people who do the work.
Free eye check-ups and health camps for drivers. An annual sports day. Long-service rewards. Over fifty women driving, attending and supervising. And the PET scheme, under which a driver can end up owning the bus he drives.
None of this is marketing. Our operations managers have been here twenty years. Our drivers stay because there is a reason to.
Drive with us