Commuting to school is a regular activity for children and differs from the rest of the age groups. In the last two decades, a growing body of literature has contributed to children’s school commutes in many developed nations. India is the home to more than 265.2 million school-going children, yet their school commuting behaviour is unexplored. This study investigates the role of demographic, socioeconomic and built-environment characteristics that define the dynamics of home-to-school commute among school children in urban India. This study adopted a questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey in four neighbourhoods in Visakhapatnam, India. Chi-square correlations were employed to assess the association among the variables, and a Multinomial logistic regression was performed to predict the odds of various commute modes. Our results have shown that variables, such as the number of school children in the family, gender, age/education level of the child, household income, distance and route type, have shown significant association in commute mode. However, surprisingly parents’ occupation and education showed no statistically significant association with commute modes, potentially reflecting uniformity in parental decision-making across socioeconomic strata in the study region. This result, supported by statistical analysis, warrants further investigation into cultural and environmental influences. This study also finds that distance is the critical factor in commute mode; as the distance increases, the dependency on motorized vehicular commutes increases. Interestingly, even within walking distance, the choice of commute modes varied based on demographic and socioeconomic factors influenced by the characteristics of the built environment.