FACE TO FACE WITH THE CEO & GLOBAL PRESIDENT OF TVS & SONS ON SUSTAINING THE BADGE OF THE MOST RELIABLE AUTOMOBILE DEALER AND RIDING THE TECHNOLOGY WAGON TO KEEP EVOLVING
Many national and international automobile companies have found a trusted partner for their services in both Indian and International shores as has been the case with millions of assured
customers. An organization which has been leading the automobile dealership and distribution for over a century can sustain its hold on the market only if it’s continuously evolving. TVS & Sons came up with a new entity TVS Automobile Solutions in 2011 to cater to the huge demand in the automobile service sector. Since then, their growth is impressive with 2-3 service centers opening every day across different cities in the country. Through FWD Media’s endeavor to understand the exponential growth of the most successful automobile dealership & service, the very humble and
experienced Mr GS Raghavan shares the transitional story of TVS & Sons through his journey in the organization.
Mr Raghavan joined TVS & Sons in January 2013 as Global President & CEO of TVS and Sons and for the past year he has also taken up the responsibility of Executive Director for TVS Automobile Solutions. As TVS & Sons focuses on dealership business, the TVS Automobile Solutions specializes on the aftermarket business, which caters to the open market of vehicle servicing after the product goes out of warranty years.
Mr Raghavan’s 14 years of experience with TCS and stint with Tata Teleservices where he was part of the founding team for the country’s first private telecom, also played an important role in forming the company’s strategy on internet services, Mr Raghavan is the face of success for TVS Automobile Solutions, bringing new trends like investments to start-ups by Established Family Business in India.
How have you instilled your past experiences in your current stint with Automobiles?
From Telecom, I jumped into IT Services and from there into Auto. You can look at technology as a vertical or a horizontal. You hear every customer say that they saw the product on the internet and then came to the showroom to buy it. So digital technology is playing a greater role, either from a purchase perspective or from an after-market perspective.
At TVS, our focus is clear: We have transformed ourselves into a digital company. The moment our customer walks into any of our outlets in Kerala or anywhere in India, at that point he gets into our CRM system. Then onwards, it’s connected through our mobile CRM or website or call center as an Omni-channel. There is also the mobile application of TVS. We start corresponding with
our customers to help them decide whether to purchase a vehicle or go to the service. Recently, we’ve launched our digital outfit that cuts across CRM, connected cars, mobility applications and various other things. That’s how the shift happened.
Tell us more about TVS Automobile Solutions.
The principle purpose is to transform the after-market. Today customers still go to garages where the quality is not guaranteed and technicians are not trained or up-to-date with the technological advancements in the vehicle. So TVS Automobile Solutions took the path 10 years back, to establish the TVS network. It was the first organized multi-brand car service center. If you look at us today and have transformed substantially; we have done away with layers. The manufacturers, MyTVS for passenger vehicles or PartSmart for commercial vehicle and the customers are all connected through technology. In the last one year, we have grown by 200 outlets; that’s a franchisee every 3 to 5 days. We are the fastest growing after-market network in India.
We’ve made about INR 75 Cr investment in three start-ups. Since technology is evolving rapidly, we cannot do everything ourselves. So we’ve decided to incubate startups. Redsun Consulting, a startup in Internet of Things space based in Bangalore working on connected cars in addressing safety, convenience, and integrated service. The basic idea behind that is if any customer comes to MyTVS, their cars will become connected after which we proactively guide customers.
regarding their next check-up and service, the health of the car, what repairs need to be made before selling the car to get higher returns. The next is about Big Data and CRM. Basically, you need to provide customer connectivity. It’s about increasing the customer experience for manufacturers. The last is about e-commerce. We’ve invested in a company called ‘jazzmyride. com’. The company provides highquality global accessories for cars and motorcycles. They are an auto partner to many large e-commerce platforms. So we invested in these three start-ups and we will continue to invest in such organizations. We have a string-of-pearls strategy. So we will look to incubate start-ups and help them scale up and maximize their profitability. Start-ups also need domain knowledge and offline partnerships to achieve profitability which TVS brings to them and get to access technology. It’s a win-win situation.
One of your most successful and credible partnership in Kerala has been with Renault.
It’s special. Our relationship started when Renault launched in India and we did the consulting for their business model and helped them appoint dealership pan-India. For best interest we decided to not take all-India network but to work in the spaces we were good at. We helped them identify the right people and rolled out 100 dealers in the first 3 years. This was exclusively for
the states of Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. Today it’s the 5th largest brand and Kerala is the largest state for them. At present we’ve got 20,000 customers in Kerala in the first four years As the journey moves on Renault will continue launching new brands
What other projects in TVS are you working on?
The focus of TVS Automobile Solutions is to deliver all the services to the customer. For example, a customer purchases a car outside the warranty cover. Nobody gives warranty for a 4 year old car. We started a used-car warranty. We have launched a programme called Accident Assist, f the customer travelling anywhere in Kerala has a breakdown or meets with an accident, we will be there within an hour for assistance. We also provide insurance and are one of the top ten non-life insurance broking firms. Now we provide a complete portfolio with jazzmyride.com accessories,
MyTVS service centers and the connected car. When the customer wants to sell the car, we do an inspection. The whole focus of TVS Automobile Solutions is providing a bouquet of products in a similar manner to privilege banking. We have become a portfolio manager for a customer within the auto industry. That’s a huge transformation. 30 million customers are outside warranty and it’s a $9.5 Billion market, so the opportunity is enormous.
Your expansion plan to the 2 tier, 3 tier and rural markets in India.
Currently, we have 200 stores in India. By end of 2017, we plan to reach 500 stores and it’s an ambitious plan of ramping up 1000 stores by 2020. In essence, through proper database and planning, we have found out our customer base and penetrating into smaller towns where the customers have a larger focus on quality services. We feel that the customers in smaller cities or rural places spend more on maintenance as they don’t have access to quality services. In fact, MyTVS has 50% coverage in tier 3 towns.
Our idea is that customers will continue to evolve in the supply chain and our challenge is to ensure a strong customer relationship for the benefit of the OEMs. Our challenge will be to deliver superior customer experience to keep them as a lifetime customer.
Beyond work.
I write a lot and currently I’m writing a book called “Why Hinduism is Not a Way of Life”. I also read a lot and philosophy interests me the most. I have a good library of 3000 books. Poetry and theatre are my passion. I’ve done more than 200 plays and I’m still writing more, mostly in Tamil. I also write scripts for All India Radio and other channels. Socially I’m also engaged in two projects. One is taking care of Veda Patashalas and I’m setting up a Goshala to take care of the cows.
Interview & Text: Sangheeta Bhattacharya Photos: TVS