Hyd-based Savaari Car Rentals intends to expand operations to 4,000 cities in next 6 months

Hyderabad-based Savaari Car Rentals Pvt Ltd, an online cab booking aggregator, provides customers with reliable and premium intercity and local car rental services. Over the last decade, the company has uniquely placed itself as the largest chauffeur driven car rental company in India in terms of geographical reach. The company plans to expand its operations to 4,000 cities from the current 2,000 in the next 6 months. In an exclusive interview with Bizz Buzz Gaurav Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Savaari Car Rentals talks about future roadmap of the company

With a loyal supplier base built over the last 16 years, the current Savaari fleet is a combination of driver-cum-owners (DCOs who own and operate their own car) and travel vendors (who own a few cars and hire drivers to operate them)

How would you characterise the car rental market in India, vis-a-vis those in other markets globally - we have a much-disorganised market here? How does the rental market cohabit with Uber, Ola on the one hand, and self-driven rental car services like Zoomcar on the other?

The car rental industry is conservatively estimated at $15 billion, and is still dominated by the unorganised sector. This sector collectively enjoys a market dominance upwards of 90 per cent. To elucidate how we differentiate ourselves from competition, one has to understand the problems plaguing the unorganised sector (our primary competition) as well as the advantages that car rentals offer over other modes of transport (our secondary competition). Savaari's business model blends intelligent use of technology with a healthy dose of operational capabilities. This has helped us differentiate ourselves by: Standing out in a service-led industry by consistently delivering industry high NPS scores.

Being road-trip experts: Right from the process of discovering Savaari, making a booking, to travelling with us, we consistently strive in making our customers fall in love with road-travel. This is accomplished through our expert multi-modal content, highly-trained chauffeurs and over a decade of road trip experience.

Offering customised services: Intercity travel is not a commoditized business, and involves multiple layers of customizations to suit customer needs. Our custom itinerary definition determined by consumer travel behaviour and analytics influences pricing and product definition.

Our 24x7 call centre incorporates a service-mentality, which offers value added services like the ability to book premium/economy cab variants, selecting carrier/non-carrier equipped cars and choosing drivers with a specific language proficiency.

Although the target market for car rental services is different from the shared rentals such as Ola and Uber and self-drive rentals such as Zoomcar, Savaari offers some significant advantages to travellers when compared to them, especially in the current context of Covid.

Unlike shared rentals, Savaari's assets (car + driver) service a single customer during a day - drivers as well as customers are not in contact with multiple counterparts throughout the day. Utilisation of the asset is not extremely taxing like Uber/Ola (more than 14 hrs/day) and this affords time and bandwidth for daily precautions.

Not being a completely tech-driven/automated platform allows constant human interaction between Savaari and its driver partners. This yields positive service outcomes in battling Covid.

Self-drive cars (Zoomcar) are hard-assets that are not operated and moderated every day. The driver + cab model at Savaari adds a layer of ownership to ensure that the asset hygiene is maintained carefully and continuously.

Self-drive car quality is heavily dependent on the customers who use it whereas the chauffeur driven cab quality is governed by the driver/owner. Chauffeur driven cars through Savaari are moving assets that can be continuously monitored and metered for baseline hygiene requirements. Moreover, chauffeur-driven cabs continue to offer a hassle-free travel advantage compared to self-drive cars (own/rented).

What are the goals? Establish a clear focused vision for the post-pandemic adventure?

To drive growth, Savaari is betting big on domestic travel in 2022. Towards this, Savaari plans to: Create a road trip community of the next 10 million road travel enthusiasts through aggressive growth investments in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Ensure 100 per cent reliability in airport pickup and drop services across all commercial airports in India. Expand driver presence in tier-1 cities by 120 per cent and 180 per cent in tier-2 & 3 cities to meet demand surge in leisure travel. Expand operations to 4,000 cities from the current 2,000 in the next 6 months. Create experiential round trips to address gaps in domestic leisure travel by combining technology (digital travel content) and human interaction (trained chauffeurs) to offer a wholesome travel experience.

Please describe the current composition of the Savaari managed fleet? What do you envisage it looking like five years down the line? Are you looking at electric cars or even transitioning to renting out - minibuses?

Savaari operates as an aggregator using an asset-light business model. The elasticity in supply/fleet requirements is quite high and depends upon the travel demand that we foresee through the year (April, May, October and December typically witness peaks). With a loyal supplier base built over the last 16 years, the current Savaari fleet is a combination of driver-cum-owners (DCOs who own and operate their own car) and travel vendors (who own a few cars and hire drivers to operate them).

The fleet also spans different fuel types- petrol, diesel and CNG cars. Savaari has consistently improved the fleet size of our CNG cabs over the last 2 years, in the context of being more environmentally conscious. A large part of our fleet in the metro cities- NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore are CNG cabs and this number is expected to grow in the near future.

As far as electric vehicles are concerned, we are closely monitoring the EV landscape in the country- both from a policy standpoint as well as looking at manufacturers who have made progress in this space. We are poised to make a seamless transition to EVs as soon as the industry embraces this technology as a sustainable and affordable means of public transportation.

Apart from the traditional 4 and 6 seater cabs, we currently operate in the 12 seater tempo traveller (minivan) space as well. There are discussions on expanding to larger minivan segments like 16, 18 and 20 seaters in the near future.

Are there as yet unexplored niches in the vehicle rental market where you see an opportunity? If yes, how do you plan to target them?

Savaari views the chauffeur driven car rental market strategically as a viable alternative to AC trains and buses. It is our firm belief that with the right focus on the scope and scale of a pan India network, this dream is not unattainable. Towards realizing this vision, we are consistently on the lookout for customer-led requirements in the chauffeur driven rental segment and have been agile enough to rollout the necessary niche products over the last few years consistently.

What are Savaari's future plans?

Savaari's approach to diversification has always been led by the customer needs, while staying rooted in its core competence of car rental services. With scalable technology infrastructure and in-house expertise in executing road-trips, these are the key focus verticals for 2022:

Intercity round-trips: Savaari's premium leisure road trip category is the engine that drives growth. With over a decade's experience in the travel industry, Savaari has prided itself in being customers' travel partner, not just a mobility company. Having executed one million road trips across India, today, we are India's premier road trip experts.

Intercity one-way drops: Our one-way intercity service caters to customers who seek an economical option to travel from one city to another across 15 lakh routes in India. With essential travel demand on the high, this is the preferred service for people, as they pay one-way fare only.

Local hourly rentals: The half-day and full-day local rentals offer users their own private vehicle with a chauffeur for the booked hours. The convenience and safety is particularly evident during these times when opting for one vehicle for a longer period of time is a more hygienic alternative to the on demand cabs which have been used by several other customers previously during the day.

Airport transfers: Savaari provides flat-priced airport transfers across all major airports in India, based on customer pick-up or drop location. Savaari's airport taxi fares are the lowest in the market.

Partnerships: Savaari plans to forge strategic partnerships with leading players in the domestic travel ecosystem, to provide integrated offerings to domestic travelers, combined with their stay, local tourism, etc. As a part of its larger plans to tap into and leverage the growth in demand for domestic leisure travel, here are some of the key partnerships- with Ginger Hotels to offer concierge-like-services across all the properties of Ginger; with QuickRide and Meru, Savaari is its exclusive partner for one-way and round trip services across India, with leading travel agency Akbar Travels to power their car rental category as a standalone B2C offering and a bundled offering in their domestic holiday packages; and with GRNConnect for their newly launched B2C car rental services.