After skies, Goyal plans to rule roads
Having captured a majority share of the Indian skies, Naresh Goyal now seems to have set his sights on the Indian roads. Goyal-promoted Jetair on Wednesday announced its entry into car rental market in a tie-up with former Volkswagen group company Europcar.
Jetair has set up a new subsidiary, Jetfleet, to venture into the car rental business. The firm, officials said, will start operations next month with a fleet of 30 cars, to be expanded to over 800 cars in the next two to three years.
“Jetfleet will be the master franchisee for Europcar in India and we will run the fleet services,” Jetair chief executive officer Mahiyar M Sadri said. The tie-up marks Europcar’s return to India five years after it exited the market. “We feel the market wasn’t mature enough then for the car rental business. Now, the Indian market is ready for this product,” said Europcar’s director (franchise network) Arnd Rieken.
While the firm will initially offer chauffeur-driven solutions in the Indian market, officials said it would soon expand its services to include self-driven options and even one-way rentals. “There are some technical issues involved with some of these services and we are trying to sort them out with the local authorities. For instance, rental firms are not allowed to pick customers in the return trip with one-way rentals. We are talking to the local authorities to relax this restriction. But these services are certainly on the horizon,” said Jetfleet country manager Gautam Nath.
While Jetfleet will start operations in Delhi next month, it will soon expand to Bangalore in November and Mumbai by December. It plans to start services in Kolkata, Chennai, Agra, Jaipur an Pune by next year.
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