It was annoying at the time, but Phanindra Sama, a frequent bus traveler in India, has come to treasure the fall day in 2005 when he couldn't catch a bus from Bangalore to Hyderabad to celebrate Diwali, a major Indian holiday, with his family. When Sama's usual travel agency couldn't find him a ticket, his only choice was to trek across the city to five other agencies before throwing in the towel and spending the holiday alone.
For the Bangalore-based engineer with Texas Instruments, it became a blue-sky moment. "The bus operators, travel agents and customers were all losing out because...