Transcend Drive revolutionizes Sri Lanka’s transportation sector with touch of luxury

Determined to reap the benefits of the booming tourism sector is Transcend Drive, an entity focused on the rendering luxury transportation services.
A strong believer of ‘high risk-high return’, the company took the leap to import to Sri Lanka a fleet of the latest Audi, becoming the first in South Asia to operate luxury vehicles such a scale.
Founded by Kishan De Silva, Transcend Drive CEO, and Chaminda Banduthilake, Director, the duo is keen on revolutionizing the industry that has ample room for improvement. 
Transcend Drive previously known as Drumkin Transporters was established in the late 1990’s for the sole purpose of providing efficient, turnkey transport solutions for corporate Sri Lanka. The company offers a diverse array of transport related services from corporate travel services, tours and event support.
Today its focus is on offering high end transportation services at affordable rates, making them an instant success. 
The duo sat down with Mirror Business to share their story and future plans.
Following are excerpts from the interview.

How did Transcend Drive start? What led to the thinking of upping the game another notch?
Kishan: We got into transportation quite by accident. We both love cars but we never thought we will get into this area. Rewinding back to 1999, that’s when we actually started, but were branded as Drumkin Transporters. I got this idea to venture out and do something different, but leave a mark as well. We wanted to be a company that people look up to, to aspire to be.

We started with passenger transportation where we pitched for Sri Lankan Airlines cabin and tech crew transportation which was the plum in Sri Lanka at that time. Our predecessor had that contract for about 20 years, and no one was willing to venture into that. We however worked up the courage and literally turned the product that was offered upside down.

We were more conscious about customer satisfaction. We wanted to give service par excellence. Although they were staff of Sri Lankan and not the customers, we wanted to be customer oriented and go the extra mile. So much so that we said we would carry a female crew member right up to her doorstep and wait till she enters the premises, to be more gentlemanly. 

Chaminda: We revolutionized the fleet of vehicles. Toyota coach busses were not what Sri Lanka had seen till we imported them. We won massive accolades by the Emirates since they were the management at that time. But once they pulled out, we lost the bid and our services were discontinued.

We also did high end office transport but we had to stop that since we didn’t get the necessary support to expand. That died a natural death although we wanted it to be like transport in Singapore. 

Operations were halted for a while?
Kishan: We were running some issues so we wanted to take a break from it all, and revive our services. We halted from 2004 till last year, which is when we reentered the market as Transcend Drive with yet another revolutionary service.

What does the new company Transcend Drive offer?
Kishan: Tourism was booming, is and will continue to do so and having acknowledged that we wanted to reap the benefits of this fast growing industry. With the bullish outlook on tourism we thought why not contribute towards that and do something phenomenally different.

That brought us to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and we decided to go for the gold and nothing less. And that’s where we have got now.

What is your new product/service offering?
Chaminda: We have introduced a fleet of brand new Audi sedans and SUV that is operated in Cinnamon Grand and Cinnamon Lakeside. They have outsourced their travel desk to us.  We operate not only for their resident guests but their patrons as well. We purchased the Audi brand new. Many were skeptical if we can pull this off but we did in just eight months. The fleet is doing extremely well. I must say the guests are happy and the hotel is over the moon. And we have lots of other companies wanting our services.

How did you enter the Cinnamon chain given that its parent company John Keells owns Walker Tours?
Kishan: Immediately before us they had a fleet of Nissan vehicles at the hotel transportation. When presented our idea they were open minded and said if Walker Tours can’t do it, that is to bring down a fleet of Audi, it is ours for the taking. 

Senok is the agent, and Audi themselves in Germany were rather taken back on the capability of a company in Sri Lanka going ahead in this scale. No one in Asia has done this.

What is the investment?
Kishan: It’s huge. I don’t want to talk about numbers but it’s about 60 Audi that we have brought down. In total we have about 175 vehicles.

You have plans on diversifying, could you elaborating on that?
Chaminda: Since we have already entered the tourism trade we do acknowledge there is enough room to expand. Cinnamon Grand is essentially a hotel that caters to the business travellers segment from overseas. Now we are getting a lot of inquiries from other corporates from Sri Lanka for their visitors to have that luxury travel.

We also now offer the service for household, where customers can avail our services.
We are lookingat boutique hotels that are stationed outside Colombo. Boutique hotels since a lot of top profiles prefer such properties for privacy. There is a need to cater to that segment and we have been approached to bridge that gap.  We are the only company to have a fleet of luxury vehicles to deploy anywhere, anytime.

Are your services limited to Cinnamon Grand and Cinnamon Lakeside?
Chaminda:Not at all. We have the capacity to cater to guests of other hotels as well, for which they would have to reach us at our hotline and we would dispatch from our base. They can reach is through our website as well and book us in advance.

What is unique about your service?
Kishan: All our cars are equipped with GPS. We know exactly where the vehicles are, the speed they are driving, and the direction; all aspects are covered and tracked. Also if there is any technical issue we will replace a car within minutes. Most of our drivers can speak several languages making communication with foreigners easy. In addition to us being a luxury service, our drivers are highly disciplined. You won’t find the discipline our drivers have anywhere else. Here the vehicles are our own, the drivers are our employees, so we can drive them for service excellence. 

We believe in doing it in style and want to make the maximum of technology. In future we are looking to introduce some innovative features in the vehicle which will uplift our service further.

Are you looking at expanding out of Colombo?
Kishan: If Benthota or Hambantota becomes are hub then obviously will go there, but it doesn’t make sense for us to go to places where there aren’t many who can make use of our services. We are highly optimistic and we will expand our footprint with the new properties that are coming up around Sri Lanka. Colombo will be a different ball game in three years’ time. We are now positioned in the right time in the right place to take advantage of the upcoming boom.

Being in the sphere of luxury transport, what is your view of the transport sector in Sri Lanka?
Kishan: The public transport sector is rather weak. It is an area where we would love to get into, that is by bringing city liners and luxury coach services. We can do it provided that we get the sufficient support from the relevant authorities. We will enter as soon as the opportunity opens. Moving forward we will broad-based the availability of the fleets for anyone to be able to call upon. We are and will be affordable.

How affordable is your service?
Kishan: We are definitely affordable. One can rent an Audi for half a day for Rs. 5000. This is just an example. We are able to maintain this since we the founders are hands on. We run a tight and lean operation. There is no jazz and fancy for us at operations. We are not behind the cosmetic factors so that trims down our costs. We believe if we keep the overheads down we can do it.

Any plans on expanding your fleet?
Kishan: Absolutely. That’s another area we are looking at. We will be constantly upgrading our fleet. About  two years down the line we will be adding new models and brands, so our fleet will be up to date. It will be an area we will re look every 3 
years or so.