Mobility Is The Word

Incorporating technology into every step of its processes, AVIS India has been an innovator under Sunil Gupta.

- Daniel Herborn

Sunil Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of AVIS India, has a stellar track record of turning companies around, making him a good fit for a company in need of help. When he came on board as CEO in 2009, AVIS had suffered years of successive losses. But its fortunes were soon revived and revenues doubled within three years. In recent times, the company has been growing at 20–25 per cent year-on-year. The Managing Director role was added to Sunil’s responsibilities in 2015, a further recognition of his achievement in reshaping AVIS as a leaner business with higher margins. He credits much of this improvement in the company’s fortunes with its embrace of what he terms the “democratisation of IT and technology.”

He describes this trend as one of the most influential he has seen in his eight years at AVIS. Not only has it meant the technology now available to rental companies has become more sophisticated and powerful, it has also become more cost-effective.

“The boundaries have been removed,” Sunil says. “It used to be more about physical distribution and you had to invest a lot of money into IT. Now, with the cloud and ecommerce, you don’t need a lot of investment to get your IT stuff going.”

A mechanical engineer by training, Sunil has also worked across marketing and sales in companies such as luxury brand Kuoni, Unilever and Thomas Cook. At Thomas Cook, he was credited with turning around the leisure travel division. With this exposure to client-facing aspects of major businesses, he brings a keen appreciation of optimising the customer experience, highlighting its importance in his roles at AVIS.