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| Travel-happy: If the price is right,
Indians will travel |
| Call this the Chennai
Bus Station Theorem: Indians like to indulge in social activities-meeting
and visiting friends and relatives, writing to them, speaking
with them-as long as it doesn't cost them too much to do so. |
Chennai
has several research-minded organisations that don't exactly worry
about details like revenues and profits all the time. That gives
them the flexibility to investigate phenomena they'd like to, not
necessarily those that will fetch them a tidy profit. In the mid-1990s,
when I used to work in the city, I heard of a research project that
had just been completed by one such organisation. Intrigued by the
sheer volume of traffic at the bus station that ferried passengers
from Chennai to other locations within Tamil Nadu and back, it had
embarked on a study to find out why people travelled within the
state: half a dozen hapless field execs (the foot soldiers of the
research business) were positioned in the bus station.
The findings were startling. Few travellers
were travelling on work: most were travelling on pleasure-not holidays,
but to visit friends and relatives in other parts of the state.
No relative was distant, it seemed; no event, insignificant. Even
more intrigued, the organisation probed further. It emerged that
most people were travelling because it was cheap to do so. I'd like
to call this the Chennai Bus Station Theorem (CBST): Indians like
to indulge in social activities-meeting and visiting friends and
relatives, writing to them, speaking with them-as long as it doesn't
cost them too much to do so.
The CBST is one reason why India is ready for
a frills-free, low-cost airline like the US' Southwest Airlines.
India's three airlines-two private, one state-owned- recently cut
tariffs by up to 60 per cent on some routes. Chances are, if they
do away with the riders that take away some from the attractiveness
of these prices, and maintain tariffs at these levels, they'll see
a huge increase in volumes. Of course, that would mean having to
fly more flights and having more planes, pilots, and ground staff,
but if they manage their costs efficiently, the airlines are certain
to make money.
India's telcos have realised this. Early this
year, state-owned Moloch Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited cut domestic
long distance telephony tariffs by over 60 per cent in response
to some aggressive pricing by India's first private DLD service,
IndiaOne. Traffic zoomed as people started speaking more, and more
people started making long-distance calls. The significant thing
is, a large part of this increase in traffic (BSNL's DLD volumes
increased some 35 per cent) can be attributed to retail, not corporate
customers.
Several cellular telephony companies, too,
have played the price-card to great effect. The Indian consumer
has obliged every time. The deal is simple-telco cuts tariffs; she
talks more. Or telco cuts costs, and more people go out and get
themselves a cellular connection.
Talk and travel (long-distance and face-to-face
interaction) are key building blocks of community, the third C that
dotcom entrepreneurs with dollar-dreams in their eyes believed would
make a success of any business with a www address (content and commerce
are the first and the second, if that's of any interest). The community-thing
won't work online in India-access is too great a hurdle-but it can
surely work for telcos and airlines (or any other travel company,
for that matter), and it can work for them at the retail level.
If the price is right, a people as peripatetic (within limits) and
loquacious as us, don't need a reason to travel or talk.
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