Ultra-luxe buses in demand

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Planning to travel to Mumbai from Ahmedabad? Drop your plans to take a cab or your car. Take a bus, instead. It could be equipped with anything from a conference room with wi-fi and projectors, recliner seats with massagers, entertainment screens on each seat to an in-house pantry and chemically-treated toilets.

Ultra-luxury bus travel is an emerging trend in inter-city transport and the latest entrant is the Surat-based logistics player Siddhi Vinayak Logistics (SVL). A player in the logistics industry with a fleet of 5,975 trucks and a turnover of Rs 1,400 crore, SVL is set to launch its 'seven-star' bus by November this year.

It plans to offer business-class luxury on popular routes like Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Surat, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Bangalore and Surat-Ahmedabad.

People from cities like Surat (which does not have an airport) have to travel to Mumbai or Ahmedabad to fly. In the Saurashtra-Surat belt, 700-800 air-conditioned (but not luxury) buses ply with around 80-85 per cent occupancy. "However, there are not many options for business-class travel. Around 3,000 taxis ply everyday between Surat and Mumbai. This is a one-way trip. A lot of business travellers would opt for a comfortable and luxurious bus ride over a cab or a personal car. We are looking to tap this market," explains Deepak Baid, director, SVL.

Dilip Chhabria of automotive design firm DC Design is being brought onboard by fleet operators to outfit their versions of ultra-luxury buses. Apart from SVL, Rajkot-based Eagle Corporation Travels and Indo-Canadian Transport are other players. Chhabria says his firm is booked for the entire year with such demands.

Eagle uses Volvo B-9 R buses, costing around Rs 90 lakh-1 crore. These are then customised by DC Design, which takes the cost per bus to Rs 2 crore. SVL, however, has decided to source its fleet from the Swedish commercial vehicle maker Scania, eschewing Mercedes Benz or Volvo. "We consciously wanted to create a 'brand' for our premium luxury bus service and found the technical features that Scania buses offered were superior even though each bus would cost us Rs 2.9 crore after interior customisation by DC Design," says Baid.

SVL will invest around Rs 450-500 crore, funded through internal accruals and bank debt. Fares will be comparable with AC-first-class train fares between these cities. Its competition Eagle charges around Rs 900 for a Rajkot-Ahmedabad ticket, Rs 2,500 for Rajkot-Mumbai and Rs 2,000 for Ahmedabad-Mumbai travel.

Older players such as Eagle are treading cautiously. Eagle runs two such buses in the Rajkot-Ahmedabad-Mumbai routes. Eagle's managing director Jayendra Bavaria admits, "It is a tough market. Our Club One buses have around 60-65 per cent occupancy rates," blaming weak business sentiments.

Nonetheless, Eagle which began the service in 2012, hopes to break even in the next six to eight months.

"Ultra-luxury bus travel, as a segment, would do well only in certain corridors, ones that would have a sizeable traffic between key cities and have primarily air-travellers, or those who use a personal vehicle," says Sivakumar V, director, sales, Scania Commercial Vehicle India. This segment, he feels has the potential to grow by around 20-25 per cent every year.

Sivakumar claims that inter-city bus travel was flat last year but is expected to grow this year as around 1,400 km of new inter-city routes have opened up and fleet operators have started services in Bangalore, Udaipur, and Ahmedabad.

A Mumbai-based analyst points out, that ultra-luxury bus travel between major cities is a niche segment with the potential to buck the general slowdown as its customers will not really mind paying a little more for luxury.