Case Study
Car rental services during COVID-19 Lockdown
Background
The Novel Coronavirus (now known as COVID-19), a pandemic that hit the world in January 2020 has given a huge shock to the world economy. As it began to spread across the world, India, like other countries, started taking appropriate measures to control the spread of the pandemic, which included closing borders, starting with international, followed by domestic, and then a complete lockdown.
One of our clients, a multinational corporation which manufactures medical devices, were part of the essential services category. To deliver equipment and provide services to medical centres, they required assistance with procuring car service during the covid-19 nationwide lockdown.
FC Cars’ response
- FC Cars began assisting the customer by informing them on service availability while following the necessary regulations set by the government. The steps taken included the following:
- FC Cars laid out a plan to understand the mechanism of providing cars, keeping service levels intact.
- FC Cars got in touch with various partners and service providers in the market to understand the challenges related to procuring cars.
- FC Cars realised a crucial aspect that cars can only be provided basis permits issued by the Government or the Indian Police. They got apprised that such permits would only be available to essential services and that the same cannot be issued to any car rental agency or service provider.
- List of mandatory information for procuring permits was notated for further sharing with the customer.
Further to understanding the situation and taking above steps, the Standard Operating Procedures were followed as below:
- FC Cars shared mandatory requirements with the customer for obtaining permit. Since the nature of business came under essential services, obtaining permit was not an issue for the customer.
- The customer was also asked to share a declaration on company’s letterhead indicating the nature of business and why car services were required by them during lockdown. The letter had to clearly indicate that necessary permits were obtained from the Government authority.
- Once company authorization letter and permits were obtained, request for cars was sent to the respective service provider, who in turn confirmed the bookings.
- The drivers were briefed both by the service provider and FC Cars to keep all relevant documents related to the request in place while on assignment. The same was done to ensure that proper documentation could be shared with police authorities in case the car was stopped en-route.
- Customer was asked to inform all employees utilizing cars to always carry their company ID card during travel.
- As a standard process, all cars assigned for the customer were sanitized prior to the start of assignment. The drivers as a mandate were asked to wear masks. All cars had hand sanitizers to prevent transmission of infection. The cars were not equipped with newspapers, as is usually the case, in order to avoid transmission of virus.
- Dual Tracking mechanism was kept intact and FC Cars got to know in real time when the cars were boarded/de-boarded.
“Thank you so much for all the clarity on the procedure. We appreciate your support during the pandemic”
Result
FC cars successfully managed to complete 40 trips in March and 30 trips in April amidst the lockdown. In exceptionally difficult times, FC Cars made it possible for their customer to fulfil their duty and helped with the facilitation of essential services.
- It was crucial to follow the guidelines set by the MHA strictly in view of the lockdown situation and procuring permits for vehicles accordingly.
- In most of the cases, organizations required the extensive amount of details before they could apply for vehicle permits like car registration number and driver’s personal and official details, which was duly shared by FC Cars
- Movement of the customer’s employees was made possible because permits were issued on time as per the official process laid down.
- All mandates were clearly enunciated to the customer entity and which were also followed, resulting in their employees’ smooth transportation across various locations in India.