Rosneft, BP Entry May Fuel Retail Competition

While PSUs may feel the heat, consumers are likely to benefit from quality service

India’s fuel retailing sector is poised for unprecedented competition with Russia’s Rosneft and Britain’s BP Plc set to operate petrol pumps with global best practices, which can shake up the statedominated sector and give consumers international quality service.

Armed with fat balance sheets and a welcoming government, these aggressive oil biggies can challenge the dominance of state firms, which have 95% share in the business. This will also pose a stiff challenge for Reliance Industries, which also has a presence in fuel retail.

Pump owners and state firms are already talking about how foreign firms can snatch their customers with sleek marketing, branding and international quality services.BP has just received a licence to set up 3,500 pumps, while Rosneft will inherit 2,700 retail outlets following a deal to acquire Essar Oil.

Foreign oil producers, struggling with low oil prices for two years, are targeting large markets such as India. Saudi Aramco, the global giant with $13 trillion worth of reserves, and France’s Total have also shown interest in marketing fuel in in India, the fastest growing major economy and third-largest oil consumer in the world.

Their strong resolve, rich global experience, brand equity and the big pile of cash will range against the incumbents’ local experience, a sturdy network of filling stations and supplies across the country.

“BP and Rosneft can put up a big challenge for the incumbents.If they are willing to spend, they can expect a fast rollout. With the government ready to welcome them with open arms, they shouldn’t face many hurdles in securing supplies or expanding the network,“ said Amresh Kapoor, former executive director at Indian Oil Corporation (IOC).

“Foreign players could introduce many global best practices that would help raise the service level and act as the key differentiator. With a heavy use of technology and innovation, they could win the market,“ said Gaurav Moda, consultant at KPMG.

Pump owners are worried. “Foreign players might just take away our customers. With fresh look, equipment, advanced technologies, higher service level and brand equity , they will certainly have an advantage over us,“ said Nitin Goyal, an office-bearer at All India Petroleum Dealers Association.

State firms are alert. “We are fully geared to compete. New players are welcome. It will increase competition and eventually benefit customers,“ said BSCanth, director marketing at IOC, the country’s largest fuel retailer. Canth said state firms learned their lesson a decade back when Reliance Industries came from behind to grab a big chunk of the market.“Our systems are ready. We have back-end logis tics in place and a huge network in all regions.“ Fore ign players would have to learn the local business nuances to compete with us, he said.

“Most of the challenges will happen on the highways where diesel is the most dominant fuel. He re, the key would be to catch the fle et owners,“ said Moda.

Diesel sales are three times that of petrol. In the current fiscal, die sel sales are up 3% while petrol has risen 10.5%. Diesel price de control in 2014 brought back priva te players such as Essar Oil and Reliance Industries to fuel retai ling they had exited almost a deca de ago after crude spike had reint roduced regulation.

Foreign players would find it hard to obtain land in big cities for pumps but the highways and smaller cities could become their playground.

“How the market share gets divi ded ultimately will depend largely on the rate at which our fuel con sumption grows. If it grows at a faster rate, the state firms will be better able to protect their sales,“ Kapoor said.

Reliance and Essar own about 4,000 of the 56,000 outlets across the country. IOC has a little more than 25,000 outlets while Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum together operate about 27,500 outlets. Shell, the only foreign player so far, has less than 100 stations. Shell’s limited presence and an uninspiring second innings by Reliance has given some analysts to conclude that the new entrants may stay slow.

Open Up Oil Marketing

We need to purposefully open-up oil marketing. It makes no sense to ring-fence the retail marketing of oil products solely for the oil companies. It is sub-optimal, monopolistic and goes against the consumer interest. It is not even as per international practice. Abroad, `independent’ oil retailers account for as much as half the retail offtake of petro-goods. We need similar opening-up here.It would boost realisations in the larger retail industry and improve service quality at the oil pumps. We definitely need much more competition in India’s large and growing oil economy.

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Daily MIS on TIPS Page and Improved Workflow.

13th January, 2014

Greetings!

Wish you all a Very Happy New Year.

With the new update, now you need not worry about the Date Selection while entering Meter Reading Entry, Slip Entry, Voucher, Dip, etc., Whatever Date and Shift is selected on the TIPS page will now be set for the respective from called from TIPS page. Earlier user would forget to Select the Date/Shift and data would get entered for different Date/Shift, which requried to be Edited and so on…

Also New, Button <MIS> is Introduced Next to Date/Shift selection on the TIPS page as shown below:

Daily MIS on TIPS

When you click on MIS button you will see All the Transaction for the selected Date/Shift with Opening Cash Balance for the Selected Date/Shift and actual Cash Receipt/Payment duly Added/Subtracted from the opening balance and available Cash Balance duly computed shown at the bottom-left of the screen as shown below:

Daily MIS with Cash Balance

Also find new Grids, Item-wise Sales summary and Sale Type Wise Item-wise Sales Summary below the Meter Reading Grid. The best part is that all the Information displayed on the form can be exported to Excel by just pressing the <Export to Excel> Button on Bottom-Left of the Screen. Please find below the screen dump of Excel Export Screen of MIS:

Daily MIS Export to Excel

Import Meter Reading and Dip Data.

28/09/2010

Now, it is possible to Import the bulk meter reading data and dip entry data in the software without keying in manually. This is very useful particularly, in case when user intends to go online without entering data manually for past months.

Import Meter Reading Data
It is now also possible to Import Meter Reading Entry data. You will find a New Tab introduced in the Meter Reading and Dip Entry form. In the Import tab you will be asked to select the Excel File containing the Meter Reading Data / Dip Data, Click on button to select the excel file. After choosing the Excel File, user will be asked to select the Sheet containing the data for the Meter Reading/Dip Entry. By Default Excel Workbook has Sheet1, Sheet2 and Sheet3 but user may have renamed the excel sheet and therefore user will be asked to select the sheet name in which the data for the Meter Reading and Dip entry is stored. After choosing the Sheet, user has to click on the button to populate the data for the sheet in the Grid below the Populate button. If the data contained in the sheet is verified as correct then user has to click on to Import the data to the Shift Meter Reading.

Data contained in the Excel sheet should be as per the Specification given below:

Meter Reading Data

Column 1: Should contain the Shift Date, which should be in dd-MMM-yy format i.e. 01-APR-10
Column 2: Should contain the Shift_ID (1,2,3) as created in Shift Master.
Rest of the columns can contain the Meter Reading data as desired but the Column heading specification should be as given under:
e.g.
where stands for Nozzle Description as given in Nozzle Master for ULP/Petrol Nozzle Number 1 in above example. should be followed by to specify that the column contains the Meter Reading Data for the said nozzle.

Similarly for Testing data for the said nozzle you have to specify the column name as to contain the data for Petrol Nozzle 1 and so on.

Please note that the First row of the excel sheet should contain the Column Heading specifying the Data contained in the column, Second Row being the Opening Meter Reading for the First day in the sheet and third row containing the Meter closing for the first day and Meter Opening for the next day, fourth row onwards the closing meter reading data for the date in the first column and so on.

Import Dip Entry Data
Just as Import Meter Reading data mentioned above, it is now also possible to import Dip Entry data. To Import the Dip Entry data, procedure to be follow is exactly as mentioned in import meter reading data above.

1. Select the Excel File
2. Select the Excel Sheet to Import which contains the Dip Entry Data
3. Click on Button to populate the data contained in the selected sheet to preview before actually imprting data.
4. Click on Import Data button to Import the data.

Data contained in the Excel sheet should be as per the Specification given below:

Import Dip Reading Data

Column 1: Should contain the Shift Date, which should be in dd-MMM-yy format i.e. 01-APR-10
Column 2: Should contain the Shift_ID (1,2,3) as created in Shift Master.
Rest of the columns can contain the Dip Reading data as desired but the Column heading specification should be as given under:
e.g.

where stands for Tank Name as given in Tank Master for ULP/Petrol Tank in the above example. ULP should be followed by to specify that the column contains the Dip Stock Volume Data for the said Tank.

Similarly for importing the Dip Reading data for the said Tank you have to specify the column name as to contain the Dip Reading data in CM as per the calibration chart for Petrol Tank and so on.

Please note that the First row of the excel sheet should contain the Column Heading specifying the Data contained in the column, Second Row onwards being the Dip Reading data for the date in the first column and so on.