On a visit to Bangkok last year, Aditya Loomba saw for the first time a ‘Boardroom on Wheels’, a concept he thought would be an instant hit in India.

His intuition proved right when, just weeks after he replicated the idea here, enquiries started flooding his car rental firm’s Delhi office.

Simply put, a ‘Boardroom on Wheels’ is a vehicle with conference tables and chairs, enabling executives to conduct meetings while on the move. These vehicles come fitted with TV screens and DVD players for presentations, WiFi connectivity, mini fridges, laptop and mobile chargers among others.

“This concept is also successful in cities such as Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and with Indian cities having a lot of similarities in terms of traffic congestion, this should be a success here. The value proposition is that time is money, so we help you make optimal use of time that you are stuck in traffic,” Loomba, Joint Managing Director with ECO Rent A Car, told BusinessLine .

A fortnight ago, ECO Rent A Car launched services in three cities — Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru — on Toyota Venturys imported from Thailand. The company provides the service as ‘ECO Boardroom on Wheels’ and operates 11 vehicles across these cities.

The retrofitted, eight-seater vehicles cost about $100,000 each, and come with revolving seats, flip-down plasma screens, in-car WiFi and projectors, among others. The company gets about 10-12 bookings per day.

The firm charges ₹10,000 per day per vehicle, with chauffeur, fuel and soft drinks.

“Business is coming in from multinational companies, businessmen, the SME sector and real estate companies, among others. Companies with multiple offices in a city also book these services,” Loomba said.

ECO Rent A Car, which has 3,000 vehicles plying across the country and transports nearly 20,000 passengers a day, is also getting enquiries for long-term leases of up to three years.

Further, the company is planning to launch the services in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Goa, and is looking at introducing Mercedes mini vans by the end of this year.

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