Market Plan

Current marketing situation:

This part of the marketing plan deals with different dimensions or facts of the current
situation. It examines the market situation, competitive situation, distribution situation and
macro-environment as discussed below:

Market situation: The population of Guwahati city in 2016 was 1.91 million. It has been
noticed that there has been an increase of 0.71 million in the past 5 years and every year the
population has increased on an average of 0.142 million. The forecasted population of
Guwahati city for the year 2017 is 2.052 million.

The population density of Guwahati is 4400 persons per square kilometre. The city is one of
the quickest developing cities in India.

The traffic volume of Guwahati has increased several times during the past 5 years. The
increase in number of total registered vehicles of all types from 1997-2002 is shown in the
table below

Period Two wheeler Three wheeler Four wheeler Six wheeler

1997-1998 64,915 4,117 22,812 32,495
1998-1999 68,737 5172 23,361 35,437
1999-2000 75,263 6,912 31,573 38,163
2000-2001 1,02,372 11,497 59,675 41,484
2001-2002 1,07,139 12,216 62,344 47,117
(Source: Commissioner of Transport, Assam)

To cope up with movement of men and materials within the city and other neighbouring
states, the transport requirement have increased manifold during the last decade. All types of
transport, namely air, water, road and railway are used in Guwahati, of which road and
railways play a dominant role. Almost all places of the region are linked with Guwahati
through roadways. Guwahati is connected by rail linkage with the rest of the country and all
other places of Assam. The increased number of transport is putting pressure on
environmental resources through emissions.

City bus service is the best mode of mass transportation operating in the city. However most
of the buses are very old and emit black smoke to the atmosphere as a common sight. Road
conditions and high vehicle density force the mass transport system to move in a snails pace
adding to deterioration of ambient air quality. Although pollution control norms are in
operation, lack of supervision on the part of authorities has created an untenable situation
where the citizens have to suffer due to the ill effects of more than normal emission levels
from the vehicles.

The city and various localities have been connected through an independent road network.
The roads are narrow due to unplanned construction and rapid haphazard growth. The traffic
volume is large enough and the city roads are inadequate to bear the traffic load, resulting in
congested city roads and traffic jams have become very common even in comparatively wide
roads. While the inner roads have a very large number of slow moving light vehicles, two and
three wheelers, rickshaws, hand carts, e-rickshaws etc. There are 1919 roads in Guwahati
Municipal Corporation area. The total length of the roads is 511.124 km, of which 183.26 km
is black topped, 137.66 km is gravelled and 190.33 km is earthen.

In a traffic survey carried out jointly by the Assam Engineering College, Guwahati and IIT,
Mumbai 1990-91, several locations with heavy traffic activity have been identified in the city
as shown in the table below

Location Car Auto Scooter Bus Cycle+Ricksha

w
Jalukbari 3411 958 2173 2239 1892
Bharalumukh 5279 2998 5021 4669 7136
Khanapara 4815 1942 3371 1376 3454
Ganeshguri 3555 2419 5670 591 11387
Silpukhuri 7540 3183 4730 2580 9287
Noonmati 1298 1439 2640 881 3036
Chandmari 6934 3486 6454 1524 1660
Zoo Tiniali 2163 686 1972 1359 2578
High traffic locations within the city of Guwahati (1990-1991)

Thus Guwahati city has a huge potential market for carpooling as most of the residents in the
city prefer four wheelers as a mode of transportation in their day to day lives. This would also
help to reduce the traffic congestion on the roads, reduce pollution of the environment and
provide passengers with a hassle free ride. The locations with heavy traffic activity can be
targeted to begin with and the population of the middle class and upper middle class people
can be targeted as potential customers who would prefer hassle free rides to their day to day
activities. These segment needs to be described more clearly in terms of its psychographics.
Competitive Situation: Following are some competitors present in Guwahati city competing
in the Carpooling business

OLA and UBER have started providing cab services in the city however only OLA is
providing carpooling service in the form of OLA SHARE. With the cost of shared rides up to
50% less than travelling solo, response to UBERPOOL in Bangalore has been phenomenal.
Over the last year, UBERPOOL rides in Bengaluru have contributed to save around 93,64772
km driven, which equals to saving of4,40,623 litres of fuel and cut over10,37,000 kg of CO 2
emissions. UBER remains a potential future rival to look out for already having established
their business in other cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata etc. OLA
Share is providing rides up to 8 km at a flat rate of Rs. 40 and for distance more than 8 km
rides are charged at micro rates. Even though OLA and UBER have been huge hits in many
cities of INDIA recently lots of questions have arisen on the safety of passengers using these
services. Incidents in Delhi in December last year and Pune have brought both the companies
under scanner about the security of this cab services. Following these incidents UBER has
recently tied up with police of Pune and Kolkata city and provided SOS buttons which can be
used in case of such emergencies with help expected to arrive within time interval of 5-7
minutes. However this technology remains untested on the ground as of yet. While OLA has
set aside $20 million towards safety initiatives in the current year and has promised to
announce more in-app safety features soon, UBER did not give any break-up of the spend
and announced that it will invest $1 billion in INDIA for overall activities, mainly expansion.
In addition, as a step to further enhance safety, UBER will also recruit more retired police
personnel as its driver partners. Moreover all the over 4lakh drivers registered on the
UBER and OLA platforms go through complete verifications, criminal records (NCRB)
check and police verifications. OLA said that it has roped in some of INDIAs leading and
certified verification agencies including AuthBridge.

Other potential competitors include city buses, wingers, e-rickshaws. However these modes
are not hassle free, are time consuming. Buses and wingers are contributing to the pollution
while e-rickshaws operate only in small distances. Moreover these modes of communications
operate on specific routes because of which customers have to change the mode of
communication many times to travel to areas not falling under this routes. This increases their
travel time and causes discomfort to the customers.
Currently OLA pays its drivers Rs. 2,200 for nine rides in a day and Rs. 5,800 for 17 rides in
a day. UBER on the other hand pays Rs. 1,000 for rides worth Rs. 600, Rs. 1,400 for rides
worth Rs. 800 per day, Rs. 5,800 for rides worth Rs. 2,700 per day and Rs. 7,000 for rides
worth Rs. 3,300 per day (per customer during carpool). OLA reportedly has over 20,000 cars
registered on its platform and UBER has 33,000.

Distribution Situation: A set of assumptions should be used about who is more likely to find
that carpooling fits into their lifestyle, based on experience and data derived from carpooling
operations in the other cities of the country and elsewhere in the world. This includes
searching for areas that have a high combination of factors, such as:

High population and job density.

Less access to a privately owned vehicle.
Higher use of non car modes to undertake regular journeys to work, school or college
and shorter journey times to these destinations.
Households with lower portion of very young or elderly residents.
Residents living in multi-occupational buildings and therefore who are likely to face
on and off street parking difficulties.
Higher than average income and social class.
Higher employment rates.
Higher affluence, low deprivation scores.

A carpooling service therefore needs to have a range of members who will make use of cars
at different times a day. The most successful carpooling operations have a mixture of business
and private users, for example:

The local council may reserve the cars for use by staff during the day and local
residents will use them at evenings and during the weekends.
Staff, students of educational institutions may use these cars for travel during the
academic hours.

Other potential business customers would fall into the following categories:

Enterprise centres
Government departments
Health campuses, such as hospitals and care centres
Housing management companies
The carpooling cabs may be made available in stands in locations identified to have heavy
traffic activities (as shown in table earlier) as most of the potential customers can be found in
this areas. Care should be taken that the fares are reasonable; customers are provided with
hassle free rides, travelling is less time consuming and pollution is kept in check.

Moreover customers can be given provisions to select the group of people they would like to
travel with. Tie ups can be made with offices, flats, educational institutions where a large
number of customers are available. Special discounts can be provided to regular users of the
service and free rides can be provided to peoples sharing the app with others for some period
after the launch to make the service popular. Provisions should be given in the app. for
passenger safety and tie-ups should be done with Police Stations to provide backup in case of
emergency situations. After initially establishing the business in Guwahati city the business
can be expanded to give district to district travel and so on.

Macro environment: Recently OLA and UBER carpooling have faced problems from state
governments who have objected that As per the state transport department guidelines,
services like OLA and UBER fall under the contract carriage permits and as such the cab
aggregators cannot pick and drop passengers during the course of the ride as it is only point
to point pick and drop. Care should be taken this laws are not violated while providing the
service. More over legal concerns like safety of the passengers should also be taken into
consideration and sufficient provisions must be provided to make the customer feel secure
during the ride.

Opportunities and issues analysis (SWOT Analysis):

Strength Weakness
Experienced & committed Lack of own financial resources.
management team. Lack of investment.
Security of customers given priority. Cash flow.
Tried and tested technology.
Satisfied customers.
Appropriate vehicles.
Strategic locations.
Opportunities Threat
To become a concept embedded on National programmes- negative
 national culture and lifestyle. decisions.
Contracts with corporate customers. Promised legislation not passed.
Create partnership for inclusion of Better funded competitors.
electric vehicles in fleet. Future credit and liquidity problems
Generating deals for customers in the economy.
Slower than anticipated growth.
through promotional campaigns.
Co-operation with public transport.
Co-operation with city bike schemes.
Further marketing through new
media.

Objectives:

To achieve break even in 3 years of service.

Register 1lakh customers to the app in the first year, 3lakh customers in the second
year and 8lakh customers in the third year of service
Aware 50% of the population of the city during the first year of service about the
presence of the service and aware more than 90% of the population residing in
Guwahati about the service during the second year.