Strange bedfellows

'Is Deccan's DNA under threat'? asks Mint.

Well, I certainly hope so!

The Air Deccan-Kingfisher alliance is something like the pauper and the prince coming together. The airline poorest at keeping its customers satisfied and the airline whose cup of goodwill runneth over...

Having travelled Air Deccan last month I would say there is definitely a 'Kingfisher effect'. There are improvements in a few areas, although in many others problems continue.

The main problem with Deccan is not on board the plane (the aircrafts are actually quite new and shiny!) but the process of getting there.

The first thing you notice is the looooong queue to get your check in baggage screened. Why, pray, is there only one machine if Deccan has more passengers?

But getting your boarding card is much worse. At both ends of the flight - Bombay and Bangalore - there was a passenger with excess baggage. Not 2-3 kgs mind you, 15, 17, 20 kgs excess baggage. And, they were refusing to pay.

Now you can't blame the airline for these adiyal passengers but surely a supervisor needs to step in and sort out the mess instead of holding up the rest of the line for half an hour. Without apology or explanation.

Some might say, "These are railway mindset passengers.. what can you do?" The point is Deccan is not the only budget airline. But somehow, there is always an altercation going on at the Deccan counter. People have a very belligerent attitude towards the airline.

The callous behaviour of staff over a period of time is the stuff of story swapping legend. "You are on a budget airline, be grateful we sell cheap tickets to you... don't expect anything more" has been the attitude all along.

With such a 'DNA', Air Deccan is in urgent need of genetic engineering!

Current improvements include sharing of infrastructure (Deccan using the aerobridge enabled parking bay of Kingfisher). And a little more common courtesy. But tons of scope for improvement remains.

Something as simple as seat numbers. Didn't the DGCA insist Deccan had to issue them? Well see the fun. Your ticket has a seat number but when you get into the plane they tell you "Never mind, you can sit anywhere."

Vijay Mallya hopes to hike prices - in fact the airline already has done so already, by 8-10%. But apparently flights are increasingly flying empty.

I think it' not just price sensitivity but the fact that people don't see enough value in the product. The overall experience on Deccan is so poor that as a brand it attracts little or no loyalty. Its only USP was price.

In fact many travellers prefer to pay 10-20% more and fly 'any other airline'. Until one fine day you find the Deccan flight is most convenient or the only one available or the only one flying a particular sector... and you sigh, "let's try it one last time".

Only to add to your 'Air Deccan horror story" collection.

The bottomline is a 'budget' product need not make people feel cheap. If Kingfisher makes people feel like kings, at the least Air Deccan should make us want to be its loyal subjects!

Unilver's new logo - so?

Dunno if you've noticed but Hindustan Lever (HLL) is now Hindustan Unilever (HUL). And the familiar green logo is now a blue 'U' made of little bits floating in the air.

And each of those bits apparently represents the company's new mission: adding vitality to life. 25 different icons which stand for - 'our brands, our people, our values'.

Not that I would have known, really. Until, as an HUL shareholder, I received this enlightening piece of communication (please click on pics to see enlarged image).

On the one hand, you have general symbols like:
Sun: All life begins with the sun - our primary source of vitality

And specific ones like:
Palm Tree: It produces palm oil as well as many fruits - coconuts and dates - and also symbolises paradise. There are icons for 'Sauces or spreads', 'Lips', 'Ice cream', 'Tea', 'Fish' and even 'Container'...!

Now I am no design expert but my first thought was - should a logo require a two page note to be understood? An ad agency whiz I showed it to remarked,"This looks like a logo designed by a committee... Sab ko khush rakhne ke liye ek ek icon daal diya."

Of course there are some who feel the new identity communicates a 'fresh energy and wonderful texture'. For the ordinary customer, who identifies more with 'Lux' or 'Surf' than the parent brand 'Unilever' I suppose it hardly matters anyways.

Incidentally, the makeover has taken 3 years and over 7 million pounds.

While I do appreciate the need for a behemoth like Unilever to be seen as more 'open and 'friendly' I also think some of the dilemmas facing the company are due to the product categories it operates in.

Soap, detergent, sauce and tea are an important part of our lives. But these aren't categories people are passionate about any more.

Simply put, there is a divide between companies in the digital and non-digital space. “We are used to the idea of a world where change happens in long cycles,” Santosh Desai said to me when I interviewed him for this piece on the role mobile phones play in the lives of young people. “The Internet, and more so, the mobile, give us a sense that the world needs to update itself constantly.”

Companies rooted in real world products can't keep up with that pace. But they will need to. How? Through constant reinvention - even redefinition - of product and purpose.

The logo, I hope, is just a start.

Fab cabs: not a gender issue!

It's International Women's Day, which means the papers are full of stories about 'how-far-we-have-come' and 'what-a-long-way-left-to-go. And of course, the 'glass ceiling'.

One of the more unusual features today was the launch of a taxi service of, for and by women in Mumbai. The person behind is 47 year old Revati Roy, a former rally driver.

Mid day reports: The women-only service called Forsche (pronounced as ‘For-she’) has a fleet of 15 cars (like Santros and Indicas), which, among other things, offers graduate English-speaking women drivers.

Every taxi will also pamper its women clients with vanity mirrors, make-up kits and personal hygiene products. More so, every car will be equipped with a global positioning system for enhanced security and convenience.

Launching an all-woman cab service on Women's Day is a good idea. It makes a great story and just about every news factory has prominently covered it. However, I am a little ambivalent about the need for such a service. And more so, in Bombay.

I've travelled by cabs at all hours - including past midnight - and never felt unsafe. Of late, there are instances of cabbies overcharging. But generally, if you know what the fare should be and are firm about it, they back off.

I usually scan the available taxis for an older looking or Sardarji driver. In my experience they are more honest. But with any kind of Mumbai cabbie, 'indecency' I am yet to come across.

So frankly, I would not be keen to pay a big premium for hiring a taxi driven by a woman. In fact at the rates Forsche is charging I am wondering who will hire these cabs? Rs 4000 for 8 hours is a lot, given that the regular rate for an a/c Esteem, is Rs 1000 for 8 hrs. There may be a few takers in hotels and corporates but how scalable is the business?

What's more the operating hours right now are only 8 am to 8 pm. I mean even if I were to feel unsafe the problem would occur late at night, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, I am all for the GPS navigated taxi services - like they have in Singapore. I don't really care whether such a taxi is driven by a man or woman. As long as it's clean, reliably driven and available on demand.

I used such a service in Delhi recently. It's called Easycab. All you do is dial 43434343, give your location and within 15 minutes an Easy Cab is at your doorstep. There's another similar service in Delhi for which you have to dial 1929. I am yet to try it but a friend was quite satisfied -except for the Rs 6 a minute they charge when you call up. No such hassles with Easycab.

Now of course Delhi-ites generally have numbers of taxi services by-hearted. And the local stand ka taxi may work out cheaper. But for a baaharwala Easycab is a God-send. The taxi I got was an Esteem - clean, air conditioned and with a uniformed driver. The rate is a flat Rs 15 per km, visible on a reliable digital meter and the driver is extremely polite. Honestly, I felt safe and relaxed in a Delhi cab for the first time ever. And I am not surprised to learn from Tech2 that:

Chauffeurs for EasyCabs have been recruited after conducting four verifications (which included police, bank and two personal verifications). They also had to undergo a multi step process which included various tests such as written, spoken, attitude, psychology, road knowledge and behaviour.

Easycab will soon be launching in Hyderabad and also has Mumbai on its radar. The company plans a fleet of 5000 cars in Delhi and 10,000 in Mumbai - and I am sure there will be initial resistance but eventually they will achieve that.

The smart thing to do perhaps would be to integrate the Forsche service within a larger umbrella like this. Male or female driver? Quite irrelevant - it's the brand that needs to stand for safety, value and comfort.

Lastly, Forsche recruited drivers from an ad it placed in Mid-day a couple of months ago. Apparently a range of women applied. Says Ms Roy:

“While Prabhjyot Kaur (57), a grandmother and graduate in economics and sociology will be our oldest driver, the youngest in my fleet of taxis is Rajashree H (32), an electronics engineer from BITS Pilani.”

I'd dearly love to meet this engineer and ask... why?