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Part 9 of the very interesting and insightful Sun Tzu series brings us to Mumbai, India, where James meets up with a budding entrepreneur called Neeraj Gupta (“Neeraj”), who is tackling the bustling city’s transportation issues by setting up a luxury taxi service called Meru Cabs. Meru Cabs is a modern taxi service which relies on clients calling up the call centre at Meru to book a taxi in any part of Mumbai, and a taxi will be sent to their chosen location within half an hour. Neeraj had this idea to take advantage of India’s growing middle class population, and started the company 10 years ago as a garage centre. 3 years ago, it converted to a taxi service company. Their target market does not just include middle to upper income clients, but also corporate clients.
But first, a little background on India’s taxi industry. The state of taxis in general is in really bad shape and the Government wants to revamp the taxi service. Competition is intense only in New Delhi as there are no other major players in Mumbai (Meru is the largest player). Neeraj wants to scale up quickly and provide good service to the locals, in order to take the business to new levels.
James decided to test out Meru’s service quality himself and called the hotline for the taxi service. The call was answered within 4 minutes (James considered this acceptable as Mumbai was a very large city), and a cab duly arrived in 30 minutes to pick him up. He noted that black and yellow taxis were indigenous to India but they are mostly in very bad shape, hence will not prove to be much competition to Meru (as it could not serve corporate clientele). James described the cab as being cool (good air-conditioning), and it also had a navigation system plus a metre to clock up the taxi fare. The cab driver was well-groomed, experienced and also wears a uniform, symbolizing professionalism. In short, it had all the features of a premium service.
The call centre is named the “Subscriber Relations Centre” (“SRC”), because Meru views all its cab drivers as “subscribers”, and the Company spends US$200 on each recruit for training and testing. With this kind of money spent, it is important for employee retention as it would be a costly affair if there was high staff turnover at the SRC. But according to interviews with some of the subscribers, they felt as though their grievances were not heard. Read more...[caption id="attachment_5234" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Photo by Ben Fredericson (xjrlokix)"][/caption]
Part 9 of the very interesting and insightful Sun Tzu series brings us to Mumbai, India, where James meets up with a budding entrepreneur called Neeraj Gupta (“Neeraj”), who is tackling the bustling city’s transportation issues by setting up a luxury taxi service called Meru Cabs. Meru Cabs is a modern taxi service which relies on clients calling up the call centre at Meru to book a taxi in any part of Mumbai, and a taxi will be sent to their chosen location within half an hour. Neeraj had this idea to take advantage of India’s growing middle class population, and started the company 10 years ago as a garage centre. 3 years ago, it converted to a taxi service company. Their target market does not just include middle to upper income clients, but also corporate clients.
But first, a little background on India’s taxi industry. The state of taxis in general is in really bad shape and the Government wants to revamp the taxi service. Competition is intense only in New Delhi as there are no other major players in Mumbai (Meru is the largest player). Neeraj wants to scale up quickly and provide good service to the locals, in order to take the business to new levels.
James decided to test out Meru’s service quality himself and called the hotline for the taxi service. The call was answered within 4 minutes (James considered this acceptable as Mumbai was a very large city), and a cab duly arrived in 30 minutes to pick him up. He noted that black and yellow taxis were indigenous to India but they are mostly in very bad shape, hence will not prove to be much competition to Meru (as it could not serve corporate clientele). James described the cab as being cool (good air-conditioning), and it also had a navigation system plus a metre to clock up the taxi fare. The cab driver was well-groomed, experienced and also wears a uniform, symbolizing professionalism. In short, it had all the features of a premium service.
The call centre is named the “Subscriber Relations Centre” (“SRC”), because Meru views all its cab drivers as “subscribers”, and the Company spends US$200 on each recruit for training and testing. With this kind of money spent, it is important for employee retention as it would be a costly affair if there was high staff turnover at the SRC. But according to interviews with some of the subscribers, they felt as though their grievances were not heard. Read more...
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Part 9 of the very interesting and insightful Sun Tzu series brings us to Mumbai, India, where James meets up with a budding entrepreneur called Neeraj Gupta (“Neeraj”), who is tackling the bustling city’s transportation issues by setting up a luxury taxi service called Meru Cabs. Meru Cabs is a modern taxi service which relies on clients calling up the call centre at Meru to book a taxi in any part of Mumbai, and a taxi will be sent to their chosen location within half an hour. Neeraj had this idea to take advantage of India’s growing middle class population, and started the company 10 years ago as a garage centre. 3 years ago, it converted to a taxi service company. Their target market does not just include middle to upper income clients, but also corporate clients.
But first, a little background on India’s taxi industry. The state of taxis in general is in really bad shape and the Government wants to revamp the taxi service. Competition is intense only in New Delhi as there are no other major players in Mumbai (Meru is the largest player). Neeraj wants to scale up quickly and provide good service to the locals, in order to take the business to new levels.
James decided to test out Meru’s service quality himself and called the hotline for the taxi service. The call was answered within 4 minutes (James considered this acceptable as Mumbai was a very large city), and a cab duly arrived in 30 minutes to pick him up. He noted that black and yellow taxis were indigenous to India but they are mostly in very bad shape, hence will not prove to be much competition to Meru (as it could not serve corporate clientele). James described the cab as being cool (good air-conditioning), and it also had a navigation system plus a metre to clock up the taxi fare. The cab driver was well-groomed, experienced and also wears a uniform, symbolizing professionalism. In short, it had all the features of a premium service.
The call centre is named the “Subscriber Relations Centre” (“SRC”), because Meru views all its cab drivers as “subscribers”, and the Company spends US$200 on each recruit for training and testing. With this kind of money spent, it is important for employee retention as it would be a costly affair if there was high staff turnover at the SRC. But according to interviews with some of the subscribers, they felt as though their grievances were not heard. Read more...
