Auto pilot

Meet the man who has given the three-wheeler a lease of life as a uniquely Indian vehicle for adventure rallies.

The autorickshaw has a champion, and his name is Aravind Bremanandam. The “rickshaw challenges” that the 33-year-old Chennai resident has been organising for four years now has led to an image makeover for the humble three-wheeler, criticised everywhere for compounding the chaos on our city roads.

Chennai Event Management Services (CEMS), Bremanandam’s company, began in 2006 with the Rickshaw Challenge, a 1,000 kilometre romp from Chennai to Kanyakumari. He followed it up the next year with the Malabar Rampage, the route from Poovar in Kerala to Panaji in Goa passing along the scenic Western Ghats. Then came the Mumbai Xpress, that cut through peninsular India from Mumbai to Chennai, and Tech Raid that took in the IT cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore.

What’s interesting about Bremanandan’s “rickshaw challenges” is their positioning — a kind of adventure tourism event directed at young foreigners wanting an authentic ‘experience’ of India. “Amazing Race for the Clinically Insane” — goes the tagline on the CEMS website. All prices, thus, are in euros, ranging between euro 1,600 and euro 1,800, with additional costs if you want your auto ‘pimped’, the term for decorating the auto by hand-painting it, or customising it by adding better seats, fans, music systems, or even a mini fridge.

But despite the somewhat stiff charges, the rickshaw challenge has had no dearth of takers. “We started with barely 17 teams in 2006. This year 42 teams participated in the Mumbai Xpress. We even had a couple of Indian teams,” says Bremanandan with some pride.

But adventure is not all there is to the rickshaw rallies. Charity is the other plank of this tourism event, with the route being designed to include schools set up or run by Round Table India, an NGO with which CEMS has a tie-up. Struck by a worthy initiative they’ve found, many participants have even donated autorickshaws to raise funds.

Bremanandam, a post graduate in social work from the Madras School of Social Work, was a software entrepreneur in Budapest when he started taking part in motor rallies that took him to remote parts of Central Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. And it was on one such rally, from Bupadest to Bamako in Mali, that the idea for an adventure rally through India was born.

“I was in Morocco, and having great fun weaving through the narrow roads and unruly traffic. The others, mostly European drivers, couldn’t even imagine driving through those conditions and started following me after a while. I realised that I could do it because Indian roads offered a similar experience.” As for using the rickshaw, it was “a brainwave”, brought on by the realisation that the humble three-wheeler was the one vehicle that was truly symbolic of urban India.

Bremanandam’s brainwave has now taken on a life of its own. Corporates seem to love it and have been getting him to customise a race to entertain overseas executives or to round off a conference.

Now with four years of experience of organising races, CEMS is ready to step up its activities. “It hasn’t been easy, financially speaking. But now we’re ready to go pan-India. From four races this year, we will have 11 races in 2012,” says Bremanandan. Most of the new races will be located in north India, especially around the tourism circuit of Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan. “I am learning from other sectors — the airlines and hospitality industries mostly, but I even spoke to Gemini Circus — on how to improve turnaround time and schedule races.”

Also on the cards is a website for autorickshaws, where drivers can share their experiences and harried auto-users can post their complaints.