Newstrack

LeasePlan to lay emphasis on car rentals and enter bus travel

Chetan Kapoor - Mumbai

Pankaj Agrawal

LeasePlan India, one of the biggest car leasing operators in the country would be laying emphasis on its car renting operations with the boom in e-commerce. Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Pankaj Agrawal, business head, LeasePlan Rental said, "The e-commerce platform has boomed but online bookings of car rentals is not well defined. The internet will be the paradigm shift of the car rentals business in India and one needs to know how to promote and market the same online."

Agrawal was o f the opinion that going online would create value for the customer and also cut down the number of employees required to do business and also be secure. "We are working with EBS, who will assist us in checking a variety of things such as validating credit card numbers," he said.

When asked how LeasePlan will fare with competition from Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, Sixt and Akbar Travels, Agrawal had to say, "We are seeing a huge potential in the self-drive concept and many corporate, hotels, retails and expatriates are renting cars in large numbers. We will differentiate ourselves from the competitors by being more visible to the corporate customer by tying up with partners to have inter-promotional activities and most importantly, by creating a niche in replacements which constitutes over 25 per cent of the revenue stream for most rental companies worldwide and also the expatriates, who need English-speaking drivers, better cars and a certain standard of service."

To achieve results, the company is also working closely with its partners - travel agents, servicing and repairs, insurance companies, vendor network, financial institutions, etc. LeasePlan is also concentrating on cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata along with Bangalore, which has its biggest corporate client.

LeasePlan India presently has an overall fleet of about 12,000 cars which it aims to increase to 50,000 by the year 2012. Speaking about this highly optimistic move, Agrawal added, "We will push the market in the direction of adding value and having a scalable business. If Malaysia can afford to have 8,000-10,000 rented cars, why can't we by penetrating deeper in the market? The opportunity in ground transportation is huge and untapped and in the coming years we are also definitely looking at bus transportation for the Indian market."