New Delhi The Nijhawan Group, a Rs 300-crore travel conglomerate, has tied up with the Oklahoma-based Thrifty Car Rental to offer the latter's services in India. As per the agreement, the Nijhawan Group would be the sole licensee for Thrifty Car Rental in the country.
Addressing a press conference recently, Mr Sham Nijhawan, Chairman of the Nijhawan Group, said, "We have tied up with Thrifty for scaling up our car rental business in the country. To start with we will introduce the services in three metros — Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore — with a fleet of 110 cars. In the second phase we will expand to four other cities — Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Udaipur— by the end of the year."
Fleet size
Mr Nijhawan added that by the end of the year they expect the fleet size to increase to around 400 cars and to around 2,000 by 2010.
"The size of the market in the three metros alone is close to Rs 50 crore in the organised sector and the tie-up with Thrifty is a vertical integration for the company to broaden its horizons," Mr Nijhawan said.
Mr Nijhawan added that the company plans to utilise 90 per cent of the fleet and keep the rest of the vehicles as back ups.
The company expects a large volume of business from abroad due to Thrifty's worldwide presence.
"International customers can book their cars at the city of origin and then expect the same standard of service in India. So we foresee a large part of our customer base coming from abroad," Mr Nijhawan said.
Investment
The group in the last couple of months has invested around Rs 8 crore-9 crore in purchasing cars and plans to invest around Rs 100 crore in the next three to four years to further expand its fleet.
"The plan is to be present in around 14 cities in the next three to four years. These would include cars of all ranges — from Wagon R to Mercedes — and this would require an investment close to Rs 100 crore," Mr Nijhawan said.
The company in the first year of operations is looking at revenues of close to Rs 12 crore and expects to touch Rs 100 crore in the next three to four years. Mr Nijhawan said that they expect the Group turnover reach Rs 500 crore for the current financial year from Rs 300 crore achieved in 2006-07.
Mr Nijhawan also said that they are looking at setting up business hotels as a long-term plan to diversify into other hospitality businesses.
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