As India’s only same-day, door-todoor express carrier, the move significantly ups the stakes in the Indian domestic express market that is already seeing a rapid rise in competition from home-grown and foreign players.

The service will offer a pick up facility in the 6 main metropolitan cities in India – Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata – with guaranteed same day delivery in up to 18 domestic cities, including: Bagdogra, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Kochi, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Raipur, Ranchi, Lucknow, Nagpur, Pune and Srinagar.

“If you have time sensitive cargo then we have the option for same-day delivery and if its not so time sensitive and don’t want to pay as much then the package is delivered the next day, Prakash Mirpuri, VP, Corporate Communications at Kingfisher Xpress told Payload Asia.

“In addition to that what we also saw when we were studying the market is that it may not always be a need for doorto- door, but make it airport-to-door, or counter-to-counter,” he said.

Airport to Door service offers flexibility of delivering the shipment at the nearest airport of the shipper’s choice and requesting for a door delivery at the destination across KingfisherXpress network, said Mirpuri. Counter to Counter service, on the other hand,is designed for addressing the needsof shippers who can also deliver theirshipments to the nearest KingfisherXpress centre in the origin city andarrange for their representative to pickupthe shipment from the KingfisherXpress centre in the destination city.

Expanding the network
Currently Kingfisher Xpress delivers to twenty destinations in India out of the 69 that the airline flies to. Mirpuri explained that with the complexities of launching door-to-door express in India to 69 destinations, “we didn’t want to promise and then not deliver.”

“In these 20 destinations we have offices already and additionally we have offices in an another 16 cities,” which he said will be opened up in the next phase once the first 20 are running smoothly. But for existing key customers they will also deliver to these 16 cities now, if requested.

“These 20 cities cover 80 per cent of the cargo market in India of which between 60-70 per cent of this is from the six metro cities where we offer same day delivery. Adding the additional 16 cities only brings the coverage up to 85 per cent, “so that incremental addition is very small although we would be adding almost the same number of cities.”

The service features full on-line track-and-trace and customers can also download the DoD. Mirpuri emphasises that the aim was to be totally transparent in terms of services and rates, citing the fact that same-day will not be more than a 15-20 per cent premium over next-day.

“We didn’t want to create the wrong impression; so if somebody wanted to send a same-day delivery from Chennai to Kolkata, we don’t offer that service, so we’re being very transparent about where we can and cannot deliver to. The problem for same-day delivery is the flight connections. If I’m offering same-day delivery I need to have good flight connections.”

In some cases this works out well for Kingfisher Xpress as it can offer multiple pick up times for key metro cities, he said, citing the example of Mumbai- New Delhi where Kingfisher has 14 daily flights. Aside from the guaranteed service quality, other key selling points include what Mirpuri says is a “very competitive price point” for the service offered. He adds that it’s important to remember that the competitors like Blue Dart/DHL, Deccan 360, and so on, don’t offer sameday door-to-door.

“If you look at Blue Dart, I will agree their coverage today is more than me, but I will overtake that coverage eventually, but yes, it will take time.” Eventually the express division of flamboyant brewery magnate Vijay Mallya will expand to Kingfisher’s entire India network, “but our target is go from 20 to 36 cities inthe next six months and then the entire network in a year, to year and a half. Butfirst we want to make sure we can deliveron our promises.

Protecting the brand
“The thing we don’t want to do as Kingfisher, is promise a product and then not deliver it,” Mirpuri said.

“It is one thing is to launch a business, but I’m not only launching a business I have the bigger brand of Kingfisher to protect.”

And protecting the brand will be all the more important as the competition of new domestic and foreign players heats up the express and general cargo markets in India. “If our competition is growing, we will grow also. We would like to keep it a healthy environment. We are trying to develop a new market that is not addressed by them. They will continue in their business and so will we,” he added.

For now the company has also differentiated itself by specifically not going into document delivery. “We are in the cargo business, we don’t want to get into the document business so there will be a minimum weight of 10kg. Let’s see how this business settles down and then we move into the document business, but we want to keep it business-to-business – that’s why I say we are not a direct competitor”.

But Kingfisher Xpress clearly has a thirst that even it’s brewing arm cannot quench. “First we will expand within India and then, because we have a growing network of overseas connections as an airline to Singapore, Hong Kong, London we look to leverage that.

“Currently we are only carrying airport-to-airport cargo to those cities because we will have to have pick-up and delivery infrastructure in those cities before we can go door-to-door. That may take much more time, but it is part of the long-term plan in 3-5 years.”