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If your car has a flat tyre, an empty tank, or a failing carburettor in the dead of the night, you can count on Breakdown 365 to come to your rescue.
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Photo: K. Gopinathan
Breakdown 365: Help in distress.
PICTURE THIS - you are driving home late at night after a big bash, and suddenly, your car squeaks from a flat tyre. People at home are getting restless. And even as you try to convince them that all will be well soon, and hop out of the car to fix it, you notice a bunch of guys high on alcohol, howling, and catcalling from a distance. "Safety" being the only chant of your heart, you get back in and drive home with the flat. And the next morning, your mechanic gives you a bill for a whopping Rs. 5,000, for having had to change the tyre, tube, disc, bearings as well as the lower arm of the right front wheel!
Well, this is what exactly happened to Ravdeep Singh Anand, on one December night in 2000, something that triggered off an idea in his mind, beyond his transport business in Bangalore - to be at the service of people in any kind of emergency, at all times, day or night. Breakdown 365, a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year car breakdown service was the result of that idea. Breakdown 365 happened in April 2001. Be it a flat tyre, a spare part, taking your vehicle to a workshop to rectify a complex problem or shortage of fuel, Breakdown 365 provides instant service. The most brilliant element of this service is its very humanitarian offer: they will drop off one's family members, especially women and children, before attending to the problem, if one is stranded in the middle of nowhere at an unearthly hour.
Breakdown 365 presently offers membership to car owners in Bangalore. It plans to expand the services to Chennai, Cochin, and Hyderabad. Members pay a rupee a day, amounting to Rs. 365 a year. Non-members would have to pay Rs. 250 per call. No extra cost is billed for the service, except when a new spare part is used. Only the minimum retail price of the spare part would have to be paid.
The service maintains all relevant information on the members in its software, BD365 Version 1. Information on the make and colour of the car, state of the tyres, mileage, and other conditions of the car is stored to enable better service.
The first three months after the launch of the project was scary, says Mr. Anand. "I wondered what impact this will actually have on car owners. Would they welcome such a service? I had my friends call my staff for mock trials and saw the enthusiasm multiplying thereafter. And then, there was this one member who called us late one evening to say that he had hit a buffalo somewhere near Channapatna. Though it was out of city limits, we offered to help, and when my staff managed to fix his problem (a few nuts and bolts had to be replaced), they told him that his bill would have been close to Rs. 3,200, had he towed it to a workshop. They told him he would just have to pay half of it. He told them to pick up the cheque the following day. And you know, he had a cheque for Rs. 3,200 ready, saying it was the service that mattered to him, and not the money. This is the attitude of people and it really boosts our morale. After all, service is our motto."
Members get cards that resemble credit cards, with vehicle numbers, and not names of the owners being embossed on them. They also get stickers with the helpline numbers printed on them. "Our member list has been growing in numbers, and today, we have about 2,500 of them. But then, out of every five calls that we get in a day, one is bound to be from a non-member. We are growing slowly, but steadily. I don't want to become famous overnight. We just want to make sure our service reaches people when they need it most," says Mr. Anand.
Five Maruti vans, run by staff on a rotating eight-to-eight shift, are all fitted with MRTS or Mobile Radio Trunk Service. Any emergency call is received at the company's headquarters and is transmitted to the teams through MRTS, and the team nearest to the breakdown spot rushes to help.
"The cost of the mobile radios was quite high. Today, mobile phones might be cheaper, but I did not want to take a chance. What if one of my men says he didn't hear the phone ring or that he lost it somewhere?"
People who own big cars such as Astra, Ikon, Honda City and the like might be willing to spend more than a buck a day for such a service, but the second-hand car segment is what presents an interesting market. Mr. Anand says that it is this segment that needs his service more, and this is a segment that is growing by the day.
The service reaches out to industrial areas on the outskirts of the City - Hosur Road, ITPL, Mysore Road, Peenya, and even Hoskote. The standard response time is about 30 minutes depending on the density of traffic. The teams always carry five litres of petrol in a can.
Car check-up camps that are organised every month at residential apartments, and the time-to-time distribution of pamphlets and brochures are slowly helping Breakdown 365 break even.
However, whether all Bangaloreans will trust Breakdown 365 and have their cars serviced directly or indirectly (through tie-ups with car dealers) is what we will have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, if you are caught unawares by a breakdown, and haven't the slightest clue how to get out of it, help is just a phone call away - at 3631404/3539574 or hotline 98450-67004.
RANJINI RAO
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