Eagle Turns 37

Eagle Corporation Pvt. Ltd., a professionally managed company with travels as their hub, and having ventured into petroleums and marketing, was established in the year 1978 at Rajkot city by the chairman Lt. Rasiklal Damjibhai Golwala. It began its journey with the travels division, and had only 2 buses to start the operations with. It successfully completes 37 years of operation today.

Eagle travels commenced its corporate journey under the leadership of Late Sh. Rasikbhai Damjibhai Bavaria(Golwala) in the year 1978. Our founder chairman was a man of vision & possessed exemplary quality who always thought beyond the horizons. He believed in being focused & sharp like an Eagle, which is the king of the birds & is known for its agility & precision. It was his passion to serve people & help them better facilities while travelling. He introduced “Comfort” to the travel industry. This attitude of his made his develop buses with entertainment facility way back in the year 1980 when television was also not introduced.

From the year 1978 with only 2 buses (travels division) till to date, along with the passing time and different experiences it gathered, it has been able to not only increase the fleet from 2 to 146, but also add new divisions like Marketing, Petroleum, Motors and Tourism & Forex to its credit. The latest inclusion is the worlds most elite and largest bus chassis manufacturing companies like Mercedes Benz, Volvo and Isuzu with their models like, single axile and multi-axile both in its fold.
Inspite of the fact that their was several private bus operators not only in Gujarat and in India but very few players who are such old, As most of the operators wind up in 5-7 years of time. Such long term sustainability in business is to be credited

Previous to our launch of bus services between Rajkot & Mumbai in the year 1978, Eagle travels was known as ‘Saurashtra Tourist Corporation’ & used to lease bus for corporate affairs & wedding functions. What began with a fleet of 2 buses having its services in just 2 cities with one departure in a day has today reached a fleet size of over 200 buses covering over 30 cities in 6 states of India with over 75 departures in a day.

As the price of a bus varies from 30 lakh to Rs 1.2 cr & all the buses are operational on Indian roads,While travelling on the road a bus is under constant chances of damage from traffic,bad roads etc. To manage a fleet size of such proportion is a challenge. People start a manufacturing business and the machines are kept inside a constructed building,A farmer can fence his farm land but a bus operator has to keep his expensive buses running on the road to earn his daily bread. With such difficult conditions maintaining  the high  serve standards and to keep the show running over several years takes huge amount of efforts from the operator.

Eagle has a history of always bringing new innovations in the industry. It has several firsts to its credit. From introducing bottled water free of charge to each passenger to brining WIFI in buses to keep the customer connected during their travel. It is under Eagle Travels became the first travel operator in the country to introduce computerized tickets .

Eagle has also launched its signature service : “CLUB ONE” that proves to be Gujarat’s first luxury road transport . The luxury coaches are an amalgam of travel with luxury. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams and “CLUB ONE” is what bears the future within. It affirms to be the product that has been never brought on route before. It is always good to have an end to our journey, wherein “CLUB ONE” avails you with the quality of journey that matters in the end.

Swachh Bharat

Maintaining personal hygiene is necessary for many reasons; personal, social, health, psychological or simply as a way of life. Keeping a good standard of hygiene helps to prevent the development and spread of infections, illnesses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan from Valmiki Basti in New Delhi on 2nd October 2014, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The Prime Minister asked citizens to change their mindsets as cleaning is not only the responsibility of safai karamcharis. The ambitious drive includes sweeping, removal of garbage, debris and unauthorised encroachments from the roads, markets and residential places. The campaign is aimed at making India a clean country by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

A clean environment ensures the continual existence and survival of all life on Earth. Cleaning the environment reduces pollution, protects unique ecosystems, prevents the extinction of endangered species and conserves resources, such as water, land and air. A clean environment ensures the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems upon which human life and all other life on Earth depends.

If you look around, trash and litter is everywhere. Nobody seems to care about the waste, and how we discard it. If anything, we add to the garbage that is already abundant in the open and is everywhere. Littering a plastic cup on the road-side, after we done using it, is the norm. No one realize anything wrong with it. Throwing our waste on the street, and right outside our own house is a part of the daily routines. That’s how we are, that’s what we think is normal. Having waste and garbage scattered around everywhere does not bother us. We are content within ourselves as long as our house is polished clean up to the front doorstep. When it comes to surroundings, that’s where our responsibilities seem to end. That’s where we tend to stop – our doorsteps.

Taking context of travel & transportation: Throwing waste everywhere makes it difficult for other passengers during the journey and for the next passenger coming in. It takes 2 hours to clean the bus thoroughly from inside and outside after a journey. After a journey bus is filled with empty wafers packets, Biscuits, Bottles etc. this leftovers can be easily carried by the respected passengers but it is generally ignored. Due to this ignorance, Wash room in our bus Club One got choked several times because customers used to litter in the toilet

Sooner or later we have to realize this problem. We need to change our mentality on how we treat our neighborhood and surroundings. Littering is socially accepted in India – nobody minds, no one cares! We can make all the progress, we can make all the economic strides alongside the rich nations, but we can only go so far if we are surrounded by the smelly dirt piles and garbage. Financial and economic breakthroughs are good. However, along the way, what we really need is a change in our mentality to care for our environment, to care for our own surroundings. And, we need to realize this at personal level, sooner than later.

Online Bus Travel Industry in India

The bus travel industry in India is unorganized and highly fragmented. It is a 120 billion annual turnover industry with a growth rate of 25% per year. This industry is growing phenomenally in India, being one of the most preferred modes of transport for millions of Indians. There are around 2000 private bus operators which function with almost 20000 buses on point to point routes. In the Indian bus travel industry, most of the private players were regional players and did not have a pan India presence and therefore there was a lack of a centralized platform for organized scale of operations.

Despite of growth of online ticket reservations in India through renowned players like makemytrip.com (airline) and IRCTC.com (train), there was a reasonably slow growth when it came to online bus reservations. The role of IT in revenue management is prominently discussed by many researchers. The reasons for this slow growth could be attributed to several reasons like the unwillingness of the majority of the Indian population to book their bus tickets online, low internet penetration and more than that, the unavailability of a proper online platform to book their bus tickets.

The major challenge with the Indian bus ticketing industry is that despite of being used by millions of people it took a long period to witness some innovations in this sector. Moreover, within the travel industry it is noticed that the train and flight ticketing had centralized booking and reservation process implemented much earlier than bus travel industry. The bus operators are scattered across the country largely supported by conventional travel agents. There was an absolute need for transparency within the industry so that consumers can avail the services of a centralized system where they could be acquainted with the information regarding the total number of bus routes in operation, prices, availability, seat preferences, cancellations, refunds and feedback options.

E-ticketing or electronic ticketing in India is changing the landscape, especially air travel and railways ticketing coming a long way ahead. There are research studies which have discussed that service providers could increase their transactional efficiencies and expand their services by adopting modern IT in revenue management.

Growth Drivers of online travel industry in India:

 (i) Growth of Internet, (ii) Growth in Low-cost transportation option (iii) Secure payment mechanisms

Main Challenges:

 (i) Low margins and high operating costs (ii) Poor internet and credit card penetration

There are several players in this domain Redbus being the market leader, other players are Abhi bus, Simply Bus, Yatra.com and Bus Safar.com. With the redbus revolution, the potential in this arena is not out of sight. The competition in this business comes from basically travel agents and ticketing companies who have presence locally, nationally and few of those who even have an international presence. redbus over the years has adopted a business model which is quite difficult for the competitors to replicate due to which redbus is ahead in the contest.

Indian Bus Industry - An Overview Part 1.

Bus industry is one of the vital integral segments of Indian automobile industry. It is a common widespread public transport in India. The industry comprises of buses that are categorized into school buses, mini buses, tourist buses, deluxe buses, commuter buses and others depending on the use. Owing to the development of infrastructure and roads, connecting to remote places has become easier due to which more and more people are availing bus services. This has greatly contributed to the growth of bus industry. Proliferation of internet, rising income, online bus ticket search and booking, growth in low cost carriers, have further added to the growth of travel market in India

The first motor bus route started on July 15, 1926, and ran between Afghan Church and Crawford Market, Mumbai. The bus fare for the same journey was four annas, i.e 25 paise. Indian bus travel industry is a 15000 crores industry and growing annually at 25 %, with over 3,00,000 tickets sold daily, roughly making it an inventory worth $3bn.Indian bus market which was previously and at times still considered a very unorganized, fragmented and unregulated. However, now the market is slowing moving towards some uniformity and consolidation. Today, India has 5,000 private bus operators with a fleet size ranging from 5 to 500 buses.Indian bus market has revolutionized in the last 10-12 years,lot of changes have taken place in the functioning of the sector which is adding more convenience and comfort to the passengers. Indian bus market is divided into 4 broad categories

·         Mass market with bus ranging from Rs.22 lakh to 30 lakh. This market has the largest market share of over 60 %.  Rs. 22 lakh is for the non AC bus while an AC bus costs around Rs.30 lakh.

·         Value market with cost of the bus ranging from Rs.40 lakh to Rs.60 lakhs. Buses like ISUZU,Swaraj Mazda, MAN etc. occupy this segment and this segment has only 2 % market share.

·         Premium bus market is the market where bus range from Rs.80 lakh to a 1.2 crores. Volvo, Mercedes, Scania are the key players in this segment. This segment has a market share of around 25 % and it is this segment which is bringing about the changes in the industry.

·         Super premium bus market with cost of the bus from Rs.1.5 crores upwards. CLUB ONE, Olivia, SVLL connect form part of this segment and it occupies a niche market share of 1 %. The target group for this segment is the affluent class and people with deep pockets. Customers who prefer to travel in luxury.

The coming years will bring in consolidation, Lots of improvement and growth. The seeds of the future plants are being sown and good times lie ahead.