Interview with Mansi Tripathy, CMO, Shell
Lubricants India; Inputs: Akhil Jha (AJ), VP –Technical, Shell Lubricants
India; Karlo Tugaff (KT), Global Associate Brand Manager – Shell Advance, Shell
Global Commercial; Vinod Pillai (VP), Cluster Brand Manager, Shell Lubricants
India.
Report & Photography: Joshua David
Luther
What does a company like Shell expect from
a show of this kind in terms of reaching out to the participants, visitors,
etc.? How are you able to convince a bunch of boisterous boys and girls to like
or buy a certain kind of lubricant?
I think
our primary objective to take part in an event like this is to be where a
consumer is in terms of when they are exhibiting their passion points and are
totally into the game. What we are finding is that it is very hard to get
through to this side of the consumers through any other conventional media.
They don’t read newspapers too often and they don’t watch too much of TV maybe engage
just a little bit through digital media.
It is very hard to catch them, so when they are into the mode and mood
of doing things, we felt that it would be best for us to be associated at those
moments. That is why we got associated with this event. We don’t truly believe
in hard selling, rather we believe in educating and telling our story on the
kind of research and money which has gone into making our products and the kind
of technical stories we have. We try and ensure that they try our product
because we are so convinced that the moment anyone tries our product, they will
fall in love with the product and the benefits it offers. We have enough data
that once the consumer uses a shell product, it is a 100 pc conversion after
that. So the real trick is to get them to try it and we use these kinds of
events to build our awareness and engage a little bit longer to tell our story
to them and tell them why to use our product.
Coming to Shell Advanced Ultra that is
being specifically launched here, technically speaking, how superior is this oil?
Can this be used across the entire spectrum of two-wheelers or is it meant for
high performance bikes only?
The
superiority of this particular product is linked to two things. One is the
active cleansing technology which it has and the pure plus technology. The pure
plus technology is a patented shell technology which is based on gas to liquid
conversion. So Shell is the only company anywhere in the world in the
lubricants industry which has got this base oil. It comes from natural gas
converting from pure base oil which has been categorized as a group 3+ plus
base oil. It is the purest form of base oil. It cleanses your engine as it goes
along and because of that it improves the power, so from the first time you put
the oil into your engine till the 6000km mark, you use it and the power does
not deteriorates as it would in other products. It improves the overall oil
change interval which is traditionally from 2000 to 3000 km but with this
product you can go up to 6000 km. It also improves the fuel efficiency of
vehicles. You get almost 5 km extra for every litre of petrol. That is where
this technology which has been developed over the last 40 years is now coming
to play in the Ultra product. From that perspective it is unique and going into
the ultra part of our business it can be used across the range of bikes. While
in the superbikes or power bikes this will really boost power and that is the
key need of the consumer. There are other benefits like a longer ODI (Oil Drain
Interval), fuel efficiency, etc which can go across the spectrum. From a payout
perspective of a consumer, even if it costing slightly more, just by the fact
that you don’t need to replace it from twice of what you traditionally do and
for fuel efficiency it is great value for money.
What drove Shell to create this product?
Did you foresee a certain demand for this in this country especially with the
changing dynamics in the two wheeler industry?
If you
look at the entire 110 years of Shell’s history it has been a pioneer in its own
way. Shell was the first company to introduce the cleansing technology way back
in 1968 and then it was the first one to come up with the new fuel efficiency
norms. It was also the first one to achieve fuel efficiency. If you look at
shells entire history it has been pioneering the next thresh hold. In the
lubricants industry the next threshold is what comes after group 3 base oils. There
is so much of natural gas available, we were not able to put it to use and that
was the underlined factor to think through. Where do we take these two points –
there is so much of natural gas not getting used and after base 3 oils what do
we do next? I think both these points converged and then scientists started
this work around 40 years back in a small lab in Amsterdam. They started
experimenting and when it got some success with the hydrocarbon chains they put
it to some commercial tests in Malaysia. Then it was commercially manufactured from
the plant built in Qatar – the pearl project which has a huge capacity now and is
fully commercialised.
I am sure a lot of R&D work has gone
into making this oil, can you throw some light on it? Also, what kind of tests
has this oil been put through and what were the results?
There
have been a lot of tests on the technology itself. In Thailand there was an
extensive field trial done over 13,000 km with regular checks in between on the
engine health and the efficiency in terms of the performance. As a result we
have got three big claims – the 5 km increase in efficiency per litre, the ODI
from 3000km to 6000km and no dip in power as it goes through the entire cycle.
These three claims come directly from the extensive field trial tests done on
this product.
AJ – We have done an
APS sequence 3G test, which is for oxidation and deposit control test. We have
also done a test on volatility. A typical group 3 oil has a volatility of
around 13-15 pc where as the advanced ultra with pure plus the volatility is
around 10 pc. So you are getting oil which evaporates slower by around 1-3 pc.
You don’t have to top up oil, so that also reduces oil consumption. The oil
stays in grade for the entire cycle and viscosity is nearly stable throughout
the drain period thus increasing the drain interval period. The oil is also
lighter and provides much better protection. A normal mineral oil will form
deposits and the oil will form a layer on top of the deposit. So basically they
don’t offer lubrication and protection. In this case the oil will actually
clean up the deposit and form a film on the clean parts. We have also done some
tests on measuring the piston cleanliness by merit rating. So we have seen the
merit rating on piston cleanliness increase by 0.8 which is quite significant.