By Siddhartha Bhatnagar
Job availability, employment opportunities, high growth are few of the multiple factors that have played a crucial a part in the mammoth increase in migration of people from rural areas and tier 2, 3 cities to metros. Thanks to the IT and BPO revolutions, job seekers from different parts of the country are employed in the aforementioned sectors. You will find a diverse mini-India in cities like Pune, apart from metro cities, signified by the presence of eclectic restaurants all over. IT destinations like Pune, Bangalore possess a plethora of real estate projects: ranging from 1 BHK flats to duplexes. The demand for these projects is met by the new entrants of the cities. Migrants moving to these metropolises find difficulty in meeting basic necessities, one of them being gas connection. Assuming most of the societies do not have gas pipelines, people generally do not want to suffer through the long procedure of LPG cylinder gas connection with multiple prerequisites. The lack of a permanent address thwarts them from obtaining authentic gas connections and they fall prey to illegal connections or local gas cylinder suppliers. The local players tap the opportunity and provide gas cylinders at double the price of authentic cylinders. To escape from these formalities, people generally take the shorter route- which is time savvy but takes a toll on their pockets.
The ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas recently introduced the customer oriented scheme of providing hassle free 5 kg gas cylinder connection tag on market price. Available in all COCO i.e. Company Owned Company Operated Petrol pumps of OMCs (Oil Marketing Companies BPCL, HPCL and IOCL); this scheme will benefit the target audience in much larger picture. This is one step forward in addressing key customer issues and will help in fetching additional revenues for OMCs. The proof of identity would only be voter I-card, driving license, pan card, Aadhaar card, bank pass book, employees ID, passport, student ID etc.
Advantages
- Customers can come at any odd time of the hour and refill the cylinder. Preferably after the office timings rather than the pain of taking half days for refilling gas cylinders.
- Assurance of legal 5 kg cylinder from the OMCs, rather than unscrupulous local players who tend to influence the price as there is no authority to check.
- Safety is paramount: Missing from the transaction from local dealers. There is no assurance of safety standard from the local dealers.
- The mobility of 5 kg cylinder is immense and one of the driving factors for people changes places regularly.
- A new sector emerges and provides a great platform for OMCs to capitalize on the niche segment.
- One more dimension has been added to the NFR i.e. Non Fuel Retailing which is talking time to grow and will be pillar in the near future.
Without exaggeration, this programme will be a landmark move; there is more potential in this market in the near future as more people move to metropolitan cities. As people come to know this scheme gradually, it will be interesting to watch the sales and potential customers. A new market and marketing challenges will be interesting for OMCs track upon.
Its heavily pouring in Gandhinagar
Time for pakodaas!!
Oops no gas so what? no problem!
Time to fetch 5 kg gas cylinder.
He is currently pursuing MBA in Energy and Infrastructure from School Of Petroleum Management, Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University Gandhinagar, Gujarat. He has completed B.Tech (I.T.) from Jaypee University of Information Technology, H.P. and was engaged with Infosys as Senior Systems Engineer. He believes India is energy scarce country and it needs personnel who can understand the complexity in this secto. A deep research mindset, voracious reading, and ability to simplify things will prove handy and that is where his contributions incline.