I recently met a plane maker in Bangalore for the aero show. While most of the deals were being announced on the business jets, those numbers may soon dry up as there are not enough GA airports in India to support. And large Airports like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata want to discourage smaller movements as they are already choked.
I keep reading about the potential Indian semi-urban/ rural market and how FMCG companies such Levers, P&G and ITC are targeting these markets. Indian companies like Reliance & Bharti have tied up with farmers to take their produce directly to the consumers. They are considering owning freighters to transport this produce.
If I were a small turboprop seller, I would consider selling it to these FMCG/Pharma companies-for carrying their sales people from district to district. Markets in India are highly fragmented, surface connectivity bad. It could be 1-2 months before a sales manager is able to visit the same place again in his economic region. The question is whether the savings in time are more in value than the cost of travel. The stuff which an FMCG sells is low on margins, high on volumes.
With Pharma, savings in inventory cost alone could justify this. Its high value, high margin and low weight- perfect for distribution by air.
Same with servicing expensive machine tools for a textile company- downtime on machines can cost a lot and it means that maintenance people have to reach their fast.
I know a company in the Philippines which use to air lift high value Sea-food such as Crabs/Lobsters and bring them directly where the restaurants were.
I wonder if someone is studying these areas amongst the turbo-prop makers and suggesting them to the potential buyers in India. I doubt if the buyers themselves have looked at this radically different way of looking at their supply chain/ Service networks/ Distribution networks. This awareness will have to be induced from the plane makers.
Are their parallels to this in other countries? I am sure there are in the US/Europe?
1 comment:
It's a thought worth pondering....but some of the hurdles that may be incurred would be the high aero fuel cost...besides companies like HLL have successfully used innovative means like carts for distribution...nonetheless companies can study organisations like UN which airlift necesary supplies.
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