How Cougar Motorsports is making India's tough terrains accessible to enthusiasts

After a short five year stint of participating in motorsport rallies, 43-year-old Ashish Gupta, who was an investment banker earlier, decided to change gears from participating, to organizing such motorsport events.

“I went on a lot of driving expeditions with my friends, and there were many others who also wished to come with us. But when they heard about the preparation required for it, they backed out,” says Gupta who is now CEO, Cougar Motorsports.

In his friend’s reactions and apprehensions, Gupta smelt a business proposition of offering an end-to-end solution to people who are interested in motorsports.

Taking a different route

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Started in jest and with not much of a business plan, Gupta says he put in Rs 14 lakh in 2009 to start Cougar Motorsports. The company organises driving expeditions as well as competitive driving rallies for its clients and Gupta says it has successfully organized 53 expeditions till now.

Apart from taking driving enthusiasts for expeditions, it also takes care of all the paper work of the participants. This is the luxury that the company offers its high end customers who want to go tough terrains without worrying about the basics.

“We co-ordinate with multiple agencies for the driver’s paper work and also get permits from different authorities. The participant has to do a few changes and modification to his car so that it can run on tough terrains,” Gupta said.

Moreover, during the expeditions, which on an average are a 7-15 days affair, stay, food, insurance, safety gear and medical care is taken care of by the company.

Gupta says after a day of driving in extreme difficult terrains, people don’t want to be bothered with things such as looking for a place to stay. The company charges around Rs. 75,000 for a 10-day expedition and the price varies depending on the location and duration.

Gagan Verma, 46, who has been participating in different expeditions and rallies since 2008, says venturing alone on high terrain expeditions gets challenging and sometimes you need people to help you in case of an unfortunate event. Verma has participated in three driving expeditions organised by Cougar Motorsports in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

“There were around 10-15 cars and we drove from Delhi to Leh via Manali and returned via Srinagar. We felt safe as there were doctors and mechanics to help us in need and at the same time the drive was adventurous,” Verma said.

Different lanes

In a year, Cougar Motorsports organises four events, all in different terrains.

“People come to us to experience different thing each time and going to a same terrain by just changing venue doesn’t add any value to them,” Gupta said.

While he started with Himalayan Dash in 2010-from New Delhi to Leh and Srinagar covering over 3,000 kms across six states, Gupta added three more events to his kitty: one of them is Coastal Dash- which takes the participant along the picturesque west coast of India from the Konkan region to the cardamom, coffee and tea estates in the Nilgiris, covering over 1,800 kms across five states.

The second is Desert Dash-combining the thrill of motorsports with the luxury of handpicked hotels in Rajasthan. A unique part of this expedition is that the participant need not have previous motorsport experience. The event is designed to give the participants the thrill of driving off-the-beaten track.

“The focus is on having like-minded people and having fun,” says Gupta.

The events are invitation-only with a limited number of participants.

Off-season events

[caption id=“attachment_88557” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ashish Gupta says the company can grow. [/caption]In the months when there are no events, Cougar Motorsports partners with different auto companies to organise their events for a fixed fee.

“Over a period of time we capitalised by doing a lot of events for other automobile companies. This revenue has helped us over a period of time to keep us operational when our own events are not happening,” Gupta said.

The company has organized as many as 25 events for Tata, seven for Land Rover, four for Mitsubishi and two for Renault Duster.

From providing thrills to enthusiasts, Gupta took a detour in 2011 to organize thrills for the visually impaired by organizing a treasure hunt around Delhi with Saksham, an NGO for the visually impaired . Each competitor at the event was accompanied by a visually impaired crew member from Saksham who read out clues to their destination written in Braille.

Future outlook

Gupta says the company is profitable and operates on a 15-20 percent margin. It earned a revenue of Rs 2.5 crore in the last financial year. While organizing events for other auto companies is a low-risk and fixed fee model, Gupta said, “At our events we are free to charge as much we want, free to get sponsors…potential of getting higher revenue is much higher in this.”

Gupta plans to strengthen and build his own properties and as well add more revenue streams such as sponsorship. The company has so far got sponsorship from public sector companies like HPCL and GAIL.

“We have flirted with a lot of brands in small ways but we haven’t given our own title sponsorship to anyone yet. We would like to wait and build our brands and get somebody meaningful on board,” he said.