Vikas Bardia, CFA offers #hospitality to his #customers who uses Shoffr, by creating a loyal set of chauffeurs who open the door, offer water, pick up the luggage 🧳 for their customers happily. His current fleet of 150+ cars in 2 cities, BYD SUVs, are equipped with a large airline-esque screen with a roadmap (you can also tag your Bluetooth for music 🎶), tissues, packaged water bottles, candies 🍬, and dark leather upholstery).
He defied the myth of “asset-light” model of this business by purchasing most of the cars on his books. He saw the other EVs in the market, had test-driven all of them, observed the battery charging capacity, charging time vis-a-vis actual mileage, the ROI, and decided to go for the BYD fleet (‘they must’ve been time-tested in China for sure’, he quipped).
Other than the seed round, he raised a customer round with a million dollar ticket size per investor and runs his operations from a lean team, and a smart office (the color scheme is black and white), with a large monitor showing every booking status and the ride real-time updates on screen at his workstation. Currently dozens of corporates and high-profile wedding events are his loyalist accounts with high LTV.
He made me a black coffee ☕️ and poured a glass of water and balanced the mug and the glass in his hands and before I could open the door, he placed them on the table with an ease of an expert.
Studied in Kolkata, then Loyola in Chennai, he has a brain of a financial wizard. We happily crunched some business numbers at 8 pm (he waited for me in his office so I could finish my earlier meetings).
He’s not rushing things for his operations. A newly updated app is reaching the phones of his customer in the coming week with some cosmetic and functional tweaks. The rare ones who wanted to game his app by putting in last moment ride cancelations would now find it difficult to continue those practices.
Vikas is clear about one thing. Shoffr is an experience, it’s a lot about people. His loyal customers who treat the chauffeurs well, and has been regular or power-users will find the platform more value-added.
He gave a compelling business case-study to me last evening with some hard facts and real numbers.
#EVmobility in #StartupIndia #entrepreneurs #YoungLeaders #innovation