Marketers, be authentic at any cost, consumers today can't be fooled: Devndra Chawla

India is at a cusp in terms of transportation and travel post-Covid with the high-end roads and expressways and also renewed interest among Indians to explore their country. 

In keeping with this thought, at the Pitch CMO Summit 2024, Devndra Chawla, CEO and MD, GreenCell Mobility engaged in a conversation with Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld & exchange4media to discuss the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the race for sustainable mobility. 

And to facilitate this, Indians have the option of airlines or even premium trains like Vande Bharat now but there is no experience similar to that on roads, especially via buses. NueGo, a subsidiary of GreenCell Mobility and an electric mass mobility service,  is working towards building a world-class customer experience, from breathalyzer tests of drivers to comfortable lounges to GPS tracking of buses. Of the bookings 82 percent happen online and the rest via agents but also online. Hence, it's a fully tech-enabled system.

Now the challenge according to Chawla is even though 70-75 percent of India travels in buses every day, the experience is not very pleasant and is not seen as aspirational either. What Indians have done in planes and trains, at least that class of customer experience is yet to be replicated. 

He shared, “Europe has Flixbus and the US has something similar too but India’s bus mobility market is very fragmented. Somebody has to start and this needs to create an ecosystem with a lot of CapEx because this is not like a diesel bus that you stop anywhere and you refill the diesel. One has to charge it and hence a midpoint is to be planned where when people get down for lunch or dinner or a bio break, a charging infra is put up there. That means a lot of investment, but then it's a seamless journey.”

Women make up 30% of NueGo's customer base. Chawla highlighted, “If you go on our Instagram handle, any one of you can go on NueGo right now, you will see most of the posts, most of them are about women. We even partnered with Delhi Capitals of WPL.”

“If a woman books a seat, the next seat cannot be booked by a male. We'd rather let it go empty, or only another woman can book it. Then there's a separate helpline only for women, you can see it on our app, or when you book, you'll get a number,” he added.

Today women as bus hosts is not even a concept in India but NueGo has 60 women as hosts on the bus.

But customer experience is something which most intercity travel companies don't talk about because there exists no brand. Chawla revealed, as per McKinsey, 55 to 60 billion dollars in India's bus travel every year, and there is no brand. By 2030, it will be a 100 billion US dollar market. 

Therefore, to make a brand in a fragmented environment like sustainable mass-market mobility, it is important to be customer-centric. The biggest thing brands are built, which cuts across all industries, is trust, according to the executive.

He further elaborated, “The problem in the bus industry is that, till the bus is 60-70% full, the bus will keep waiting, and the driver or conductor won't start since that bus route won't make money. For us, 96 percent of buses leave on time. Though, we still fail on 4 percent for whatever reasons we do. So what you build in a brand is trust, convenience, and a promise that you will deliver what you say.”

Towards the end, Dr Batra and Chawla's conversation veered towards discussing whether a CMO can become a CEO as well. Chawla thinks that today most companies are moving towards digital, and if somebody has an understanding of finance and the consumer, there is no reason why all CMOs can't become CEOs. 

He also suggested all marketers be authentic no matter how hard it is to execute because the consumer can’t be fooled today. 

Finally, as a trend, he noticed sustainability is truly taking shape and brands understand that the business role is to make money but no more at any environmental cost. The generation which is coming now truly believes in it, and hence the whole world will have to work towards sustainability because it's not global warming, it's a global warning.

“As leaders what we need to learn is how to catch up with the fast-moving times and changing consumer needs,” he concluded.