Ioc-Sundaram Fin Venture Launches Fleet Card

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Sundaram Finance Ltd, a Chennai-based non-banking finance company (NBFC), today announced the launch of their co-branded, value-added, fleet card- Powerplus. The card will be available in two options-debit and credit card.

At the launch of the card in Chennai, P K Agarwal, director (marketing), Indian Oil, said: "Initially, the marketing alliance would be rolled out in select trunk routes in southern states and in 26 select Indian Oil outlets. In about 8 to 12 months time, Powerplus fleet card would be available nationally." However, both IOC and Sundaram Finance could not quantify the expected demand and turnover for this initiative.

While the debit card will carry negligible operating expenses, Sundaram Finance officials explained that the credit card would carry an interest charge of 16 per cent, the lowest among electronic card payment plans on offer.

Agarwal explained that fuel cost alone accounted for 30 per cent of the total operating costs for fleet operators, and added that fleet card could be effectively used to control working capital and improve the bottomline.

Outlining IOC retail strategy, he said they had planned to spend around Rs 1,000 crore in the next two years. "In the past three years, we have progressively increased the share of company-owned outlets by 25 per cent to 40 per cent. Simultaneously, we had spent around Rs 900 crore in upgradation and modernisation of 1,200 petrol outlets," he added.