What began as an inter-city service with one bus 49 years ago, Royal Tourist today owns close to 1,000 buses catering to the school transportation segment. And in true recognition of its safety initiatives, it won for the second time the Excellence in Bus Transport in School Segment (Large Fleet) Award at India Bus Safety Awards 2018.
A law graduate by qualification, Mr. Deepak Rajgopal, Managing Partner, Royal Tourist, inherited the business nurtured and developed from the scratch by his parents in 2000. “During the political turmoil in 1976, we had to surrender all our nine buses and shut shop. But my parents never thought of quitting, and gradually they came back into business. By 1986, we had four buses. Initially, we ran buses for tourist groups travelling across India. People would rent our buses for marriages, educational trips and excursions. But we knew that the scope was small and limited.”
The journey took a new turn when Mr. Rajgopal decided to enter the school transportation segment after much deliberation. And prior experience of catering to the Jain College in 1995-97 helped, even though the number of vehicles used was small.
In 2001, Royal Tourist began with one chain of schools, and since then increased the number of vehicles, and introduced many a new trend, ultimately making it the most sought-after in safe students transportation.
Mr. Rajgopal shares: “Over the years, we have understood many nuances of school transportation. We understood that except for the paint of the vehicle, there was no difference between a private transportation bus and the existing school transportation bus. However, we stand apart, because we treat students as their parents and not as a transporter”.
He narrates how initially he had to make his clients understand that transporting school kids, for them, was a whole ideology and not merely involving picking and dropping them at their destinations: “There are many things that go into it. For example, if it were my girl child it would be unacceptable to me if she were getting dropped at the last with only two males in the bus. So, as a rule, we go extra kilometers to ensure that no girl student is left alone to get dropped at the last. And, in 2000, we brought in the concept of lady attendants travelling in all the buses along with the students. And this became mandatory by law in 2014. It means that we were 14 years ahead in our thought process.”
Royal Tourist tracks every bus, and if the driver stops at any unauthorized place beyond two minutes, a call goes from the control center questioning it. Mr. Rajgopal adds: “We were the first to introduce toll free number for over-speeding, and the numbers are shared with the parents despite toll-free service being a cost to us. And the parents do call us and many ask us if the school is open the next day. Though we do not need to answer, we still do because we understand that parents tend to get anxious and hence we have introduced an app using which the parents can track the bus. What matters is how we handle any issue. Our response makes all the difference.”
Royal Tourist takes pride in the fact that their buses have gone incident free in all these years. Mr. Rajgopal recounts the stringent methods he has devised to keep it so in the future too: “We never advertise for drivers. It is only through the word of mouth. We go to meet the driver in his place and surroundings to find out from the neighborhood about his behavior and habits. We have an induction policy and train them on how to speak to the parents, lady attendants and children, and also how to react in case of an emergency.
Also, we were the first to introduce GPS in school buses in 2009-10 though it was prevalent in the corporate bus segment. Then, we install two cameras in all our buses – facing outside and inside – whereas the law mandates only one. The unique point is that the normal viewing angle is 85-90°, but we have it at 129°. If a parent files a complaint that his/her child was not handed over to them, then we have the proof to show as to who picked up the child because the camera has recorded it. And it also records all the movement so that in case of an accident we will know if our driver is at fault.”
According to Mr. Rajgopal, four text messages are sent to the parents about the whereabouts of the child – at the time of boarding the bus, having reached the school, boarding the bus to go home and when the child is dropped at the drop point. He also has created the concept of CRO or customer relation officer who reaches out to the parents if they have an issue. For this purpose, they have divided the State into five clusters and each cluster is serviced by one CRO.
Royal Tourist has created NFC or Near Field Communication cards which are issued to three authorized guardians of a child. He says: “Out of the 42,000 children we transport, a large number of them cannot recognize their stops. And identifying the kid and matching him/her with the designated stop should not pose a challenge if the lady attendant, the driver, the bus stop or even the bus is new. Also, if the designated guardian is not picking up the child on a particular day, we need to know whom to hand over the child to. The lady attendant scans the NFC to identify the person picking up the child that day.”
Why just the children, Royal Tourist has been following a system since 2005 to pick up its drivers and lady attendants from their homes because they too need to be taken care of. And if in case a driver is absent or on leave, Mr. Rajgopal is ready with the replacement in abundance: “We have 145 supervisors with heavy motor vehicle licences, which means 145 absentee drivers can be managed in-house though it has never happened till date. The same is true for the lady attendants. And all of them receive benefits such as ESI and PF as our employees.”
Another of their proactive safety measures is to check all the drivers three times a day for any alcohol consumption, and at any given point of time, 3,000 readings can be recorded.
A feather in the company cap came in the form of recognition from an Indian commercial vehicle OEM roping in Mr. Rajgopal to advise them on safety features to include while manufacturing school buses. He shares: “As an operator, we had already installed them in our buses such as having first-aid boxes made of stainless steel instead of plastic because in case of a fire, the plastic box can melt. We have always used fire-retardant material for seat upholstery. The material is more than three times the cost of a fire-resistant cloth, yet we still opt for the fire-retardant one.”
He adds: “We never comprise on safety standards. Even our parking yards have CCTVs while guards man the gates. We may not have made major profits, but we strive for impeccable safety standards.”
And that is how Royal Tourist is a name to reckon with in safe school bus transportation.