Mumbai: Fuel retailers in India’s public and private sectors have hit the highways for growth.
State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) is focusing on highways to arrest the decline in its diesel market share. Its One Stop Trucker Shops are strategically positioned on highways to give transporters and drivers an experience of ‘a home away from home’.
“As a part of personal travel offerings, the ‘Happy Roads’ pilot has been initiated in Bengaluru-Mysuru-Coorg, Bengaluru-Ooty and Bengaluru-Coonoor sections where carefully chosen BPCL highway retail outlets will provide the customers with assured services like hygienic baby care rooms, clean toilets, impulse food racks and cold beverages,” BPCL’s 2016-17 annual report said. Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) is focusing on highways to help truck drivers.
“Long-distance truck drivers are the most vulnerable in our supply chain. To address their sensitive issues of STIs and HIV/AIDS, Project Suraksha reaches out to them by offering free medical consultation, counselling and other outreach services through ‘Khushi Clinics’ at our retail outlets on highways,” its 2016-17 annual report said.
Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC) too attributes some of its growth in fuel sales to its focus on highways.
“The key tenets of our retail strategy were focus on look-and-feel of the retail outlet to enhance customer experience, network augmentation to maintain leadership, highway proposition to focus on the major revenue-generating segments, urban proposition to cater and align to the special needs of the urban customers and rural proposition to address the vast potential of the latent rural energy demand,” IOC’s last annual report said.
Reliance Industries Ltd has been focusing on expanding its network on the highways for some time now. The firm is also considering retail sales of liquefied natural gas and setting up of charging stations for electric vehicles at its petrol pumps.