Empathy is key to building a loyal team, says Kolors co-founder Anca Gardea

Whether you drive a chicken bus in Nicaragua or a Greyhound in the United States, intercity bus travel is rarely a glamorous affair. Despite its essential nature for moving people for vacations, visiting family and business, this particular mode of transport has often been reduced to its most essential components - many seats, wheels, an engine and a driver - in order to get the most profit for the least effort.

In Latin America, technological advancements coupled with a growing middle class with higher disposable income have opened the bus industry to disruption. Kolors, a Mexico City-based startup that provides elevated bus service and smart intercity mobility, may well have the advantage of being the first to respond to this disruption.

Anca Gardea, co-founder, chief technology officer and product manager at Kolors, previously founded Busolinea, one of the first bus aggregators in Mexico and Latin America. As with Kolors, Gardea founded Busolinea with her husband, Rodrigo Martínez - Gardea is the technology-focused one in the relationship, while Martínez takes care of the business aspects. A few months after Busolinea was founded, the company was purchased as a subsidiary by one of the largest incumbent intercity bus operators in Mexico. Gardea and Martínez went on to lead the digital unit of this company, where both acquired great experience in various aspects of the modernization of the intercity bus industry.

Feeling held back by the sluggish technology so often found in large organizations, the two decided to change direction in September 2019 and launch Kolors.

"At Kolors, we have developed everything necessary for operations management, from route planning to price optimization, including tools such as revenue management, team support and customer care, etc.", Gardea told TechCrunch.

Everything except owning and operating the buses themselves. Kolors follows a pattern the company described as "if Uber and Southwest Airlines had a baby." The startup basically provides a technology layer to small and medium-sized bus operators to help them operate more smoothly. Kolors also provides each bus with an attendant, a Kolors employee who checks passengers in, accepts cash payments when needed, and sells snacks and beverages, all to provide that near-luxury level of service.

>

"I've been in the tech industry for over 15 years, and it's not enough to be the smartest person at the table if you're not a team player and a good person ." Anca Gardea, co-founder of Kolors

This business model, while evolving, has attracted the attention of major investors in the field of mobility. Kolors recently closed a $20 million Series A led by UP.Partners with participation from Toyota Ventures, Maniv Mobility, K5 Global and Mazapil.

We sat down with Gardea to discuss how being an empathetic leader prompted her engineering team to work for six months without pay while Kolors was starting up, why intercity bus travel in Latin America are prone to disruption and how the company expects to grow in the coming year.

Editor's Note: The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity.