Pune: This startup redefines how Army personnel travel

As it caters to the armed forces, veterans and their dependents only, udChalo has a captive audience close to 10 million.

udChalo CEO Ravi Kumar

ONE OF the challenges of being in the armed forces is that leaves often get sanctioned at the last moment, making it difficult for many jawans to get a railway ticket. On the other hand, thousands of seats on domestic airlines go empty every day. Pune-based startup, udChalo, is bridging the gap by bringing soldiers and their families from trains to planes. In their first year, udChalo flew 1,200 soldiers. Today, they fly around 16 lakh army personnel annually.

“We wanted to democratise air travel for our customers. As a strategic approach, we focused on non-officers who would generally travel by train. This was one of the biggest challenges that we faced while catering to this niche consumer, the inertia to move from train travel to air travel. The second biggest challenge was the cost, last-minute air ticket bookings attracted a huge price tag and were not affordable. We brought in an all-new concept of discounted fares for armed forces to manage the second challenge and furthermore, we helped them file it against their LTC (Leave Travel Concession). We bridged the cost gap and the reimbursement of train tickets was directly utilised to book airline tickets. That is how we converted people travelling by railway to airlines. The difference in fare is marginal,” said Ravi Kumar, CEO, who founded udChalo with another colleague, both engineers from the Army Institute of Technology, Pune.

As it caters to the armed forces, veterans and their dependents only, udChalo has a captive audience close to 10 million. The revenue model for the brand is based on charging convenience fees as well as earning bonuses from the airline for achieving the targets. The company is in the process of creating a membership model which will allow its customers with additional offers and a host of facilities. One of udChalo’s recent initiatives was “Sarhad se Ghar Tak”, a pilot project on dropping clients from Pune airports to the towns from where most soldiers come, such as Satara and Kolhapur.

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Pandemic posed huge losses to the airline industry as travel came to a complete halt. However, as soon as air travel was restored, udChalo could connect with their customer base since the movement of armed forces falls under essential travel.

“Armed forces were the first to get vaccinated and travel started immediately for them. We ensured the best possible arrangements were made for them…The world is still struggling with the impact of unforeseen new variants but we are committed to supporting the armed forces and provide the best services,” said Kumar.

A lot of non-officer personnel, however, feel that airlines are only for officers. “We do a lot of offline presentations to instill confidence in them that air travel is as easy as railways travel. We answer questions such as, ‘how much luggage can we take?’” said Kumar.

The company, which is bootstrapped, also finds availability of funds a challenge as it pursues an aggressive growth. But, with a Best Employment Generating MSE in the Small-Services segment – award by SIDBI-ET India in 2019, under their belt, udChalo has ventured into e-commerce — real estate for army personnel and fintech services for them that includes filing taxes.

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“Our motto is ‘Service for Services’. Our soldiers are doing their duty and to honour them is ours,” said Kumar. udChalo, which has a 50:50 gender workforce employs soldiers who got injured and are paraplegic as well as army wives at their call centres and other areas. “Of course, we are doing business but we also want to ensure that right employment is created for the armed forces,” he added.

Dipanita Nath

Dipanita Nath is interested in the climate crisis and sustainability. She has written extensively on social trends, heritage, theatre and startups. She has worked with major news organizations such as Hindustan Times, The Times of India and Mint. ... Read More

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