Pitch me a company: an intercity bus ticketing platform. Size its revenue from the buses on it, say why now, and defend a valuation against a sceptical interviewer.

Yatrik books about Rs 161 crore of revenue on Rs 1,613 crore of ticket value and earns about Rs 20 crore of EBITDA today. The thesis is a marketplace with fixed costs already covered, where every extra bus adds revenue at a 40% contribution margin. At 5x revenue, Rs 806 crore, the price rests on three years of 30% growth taking EBITDA to about Rs 97 crore; the defence against take-rate compression is that a fall to 7% still leaves the platform profitable.

Build from the physical units. Think of a wedding caterer who quotes by counting guests, plates per guest and the price of a plate; nobody trusts a number that starts with the total. 2,000 buses x 40 seats x 70% occupancy is 56,000 seats a day; at Rs 800 a seat and 360 days that is Rs 1,613 crore of tickets, of which Yatrik keeps 10%, Rs 161 crore. The take rateThe share of transaction value a marketplace keeps as its own revenue. A 10% take rate on Rs 100 of tickets is Rs 10 of revenue. is the hinge of the whole pitch, so say it as a separate step rather than burying it.

Three sentences. Intercity bus travel is a large, fragmented market where operators cannot build their own booking technology, so a platform that aggregates demand earns a toll on every seat. Fixed costs of Rs 45 crore are already covered, so growth from here drops to EBITDA at the 40% contribution margin. Why now: operators who used to sell through agents and counters now accept that a listing fee is cheaper than empty seats, and the switch from cash to digital payment makes the commission collectable. Keep the why-now about behaviour you can diligence by calling operators, not about a macro statistic you half remember.

Agree that take rate is the risk, then show the business survives it. At 30% growth for three years revenue reaches Rs 354 crore and EBITDA about Rs 97 crore, so Rs 806 crore today is 8.3x year 3 EBITDA, and at 15x that EBITDA the exit value is Rs 1,451 crore. Then run the attack: at a 7% take rate on today's tickets, revenue is Rs 113 crore and EBITDA Rs 0.2 crore, still positive. The pitch does not need 10% to hold; it needs operators to keep listing, which is a question about their alternatives, not about Yatrik's pricing.

Name the two things that would make you walk away. If the top twenty operators carry most of the seats, they can build or share their own booking and bypass the platform, and if occupancy sold through Yatrik is 70% only because it discounts, the take rate is already lower than it looks. Both are checkable in a week of diligence: operator concentration from the listing data, and the net fare after coupons from the payments ledger. A pitch that ends with its own kill criteria is the one the room remembers.