Palanquin Ecotales

Palanquin Ecotales We are a premium car rental service provider in North East India

Innova Crysta/Hycross/Carens/Dzire/Bolero/Urbania/Traveller/AC Bus

How wonderful would it be if you are assured of a car and driver available at the exact same time everyday 1. to take yo...
02/07/2026

How wonderful would it be if you are assured of a car and driver available at the exact same time everyday
1. to take you and your kid to school
2. drop you at your office
3. pick up your kid from school
4. pick you up from your office.

All without any of the hassles of booking for a ride on an app, waiting for the ride to be accepted by someone, without the hassle of negotiating the "kuch extra de dena", without the irritation of no AC in the scorching heat.

Assured rides, at the same time and place everyday, from the same pool set of trusted drivers, and same pool of Palanquin cars.

We are doing a pilot of this in Guwahati city, with our own cars and own drivers. If you require such a service, or know anyone who might need it, please connect with us. Subscribe to our assured pickup and drop services, and have peace of mind, certainty and security.

Meet my friend, Bhola.His forefathers migrated from Odisha to Assam many years ago, and today, Bhola works in the breath...
01/07/2026

Meet my friend, Bhola.

His forefathers migrated from Odisha to Assam many years ago, and today, Bhola works in the breathtaking hills of Arunachal Pradesh, nurturing the land with the same spirit of hard work. This season alone, he has planted over 10,000 cauliflower and broccoli saplings and turning these hills greener, more productive, and full of life.

I was in Arunachal on a recce when I happened to strike up a conversation with him. He proudly showed me his axe and plough, and, well I may have contributed my tiny bit too! 😄

Moments like these remind me that travel is so much more than landscapes. It's about the people, their journeys, their resilience, and the stories they carry with them.

This is exactly why I love what I do. Every recce introduces me to incredible individuals like Bhola, and every conversation leaves me richer than before.

Absolute bliss. ❤️

05/05/2026

I have been running a car rental and travel company in Guwahati for some time now. From my experience, I have come to realize that the quality of a guest's journey depends almost entirely on the person behind the wheel, the driver.

However, as is prevalent in many other industries or sectors, there is a dearth of shared knowledge and know how on what are the good practices every driver must follow so that the journey feels seamless and stress free for the guests. It is especially so in North East India, where we primarily operate in. We have a lack of any common standard or written guide that any driver, from anywhere in Northeast India, can refer to.

To streamline our own operations, and to make them as standardized as possible, we have brainstormed and taken inputs from guests, friends, our own drivers and partner vendors over the last few months. Over the last few months, my team at Palanquin Ecotales has put together a detailed Standard Operating Procedure covering everything a professional driver needs to know — from how to present themselves before a guest, to how not to drive, to how to present necessary reports to the Operations Team. It is still a work in progress, and we will continue to update it through feedback and relevance.

Starting tomorrow, I shall share these practices here, one post at a time. They are not intended to be our company's advertisement, or spreading of random gyaan on the Internet. We feel that every guest deserves a safe and sound journey, where the travel should be the last think they should take stress about. Also, we want our own driver brothers to inculcate the good habits so that the overall ecosystem of travel in the North East improves.

North East India already prides itself on being a region of the most adorable people, with warm and homely hospitality. We want to extend that to our travel sector as well, where every driver becomes the ambassador of the good image of our beautiful region.

- Queen Bhardwaj
Palanquin Ecotales Private Limited

At Palanquin Car Rentals, our clients are more than travellers, they are the reason we do what we do. Every journey thro...
09/02/2026

At Palanquin Car Rentals, our clients are more than travellers, they are the reason we do what we do. Every journey through the Northeast is crafted with care, comfort, and heartfelt gratitude for the trust you place in us.

In this picture, we have an adventurous couple from Netherlands on their 30 days trip to the Northeast.

While we may say that reels these days are a menace; reels and vlogs on North East India's tourist places are the ones w...
09/01/2026

While we may say that reels these days are a menace; reels and vlogs on North East India's tourist places are the ones which have really boosted tourism in the region, unlike any tourism fairs or workshops or seminars or television ads.
People these days don't feel like North East is some alien land far far away from the metros, but reachable within just two to three hours.

“Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality.”In the car rental sector, headline revenue numbers alone do not r...
30/10/2025

“Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality.”

In the car rental sector, headline revenue numbers alone do not reflect business health. A recurring challenge is delayed or defaulted payments by certain customers — GST returns may show revenue, but the cash never arrives. In addition, even genuine payments often come with a significant delay, creating continuous stress on working capital and day-to-day operations. Fuel has to be filled, tolls have to be paid, parking has to be paid, wages and salaries have to be paid, rent has to be paid, vehicle maintenance has to be done.

At Palanquin, we have a policy of paying our vendors immediately because we understand their capital requirements and the operational dependencies they carry. Because we have walked in those shoes, in fact we wear them every day.

"Realignment of business strategies based on company priorities"When we started Palanquin Ecotales, airport transfers wa...
30/10/2025

"Realignment of business strategies based on company priorities"

When we started Palanquin Ecotales, airport transfers was one of our primary offerings. Guwahati Airport (GAU) is the biggest and the most serviced airport in the North East, and can be called the Gateway to the North East. It has direct connectivity with all the metro cities and major cities of India. Our airport transfers used to be done at flat rates of 600 for sedan category, 850 for mid sized MUV like Ertiga and Carens, and 1500 for Innova Crysta and Hycross. From anywhere in Guwahati, and to anywhere in Guwahati, whether it be a 10 km travel, or a 35 km one, the cost was the same.

Guwahati Airport is situated quite far from the city, and is at a distance of about 30 kms from our garage. So, each airport trip used to take us 60kms, if we could not get a corresponding transfer to club it with.

We kept the rates the same for both night and day, and it was a great success. We got our first batch of customers through our airport transfers, but financially, we were burning cash through our airport transfers. After spending on fuel, water bottles, driver charges, were left with almost nothing. Only when we got a corresponding pick up after a drop, or a drop coincided with a corresponding pick up, we actually made some money. We did not have an app like Uber, Ola to pick bookings at the drop off point.

As on date, we have not stopped the airport transfers entirely. It is still there, but we have raised the rates, with rate of 1000 for sedans, 1500 for Ertiga and Carens, and 2000 for Innova Crysta and Hycross, realigning our airport transfers strategy. As a company in its initial stages, we felt it was not right to burn cash to earn customers, instead we should focus on profitability and realigned our services to focus on the sectors where the scope of profitability was higher - services for tourists to Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and Employee Transportation Services.

As we look at the numbers now, our airport transfers through sedans are lower, because that segment is catered to well by the aggregators like Uber, Rapido, Ola. People using sedans are the cost conscious category, for whom mostly customer experience matters less, cost savings matter more. In the segment not being catered to by the cab aggregators, like the 7 seater segment, we continue to do quite well.

More on this segment and its learnings in subsequent posts...

In pic: One of our flyers in our initial years when we started out.

Clean vehicles are very important in the car rental business. Guests love entering into a properly washed and cleaned ve...
29/10/2025

Clean vehicles are very important in the car rental business. Guests love entering into a properly washed and cleaned vehicle, setting the mood just right at the start of the day.

We, at Palanquin Ecotales, focus on the cleanliness of our cars religiously. If we like to travel in clean cars, we want our guests to travel in clean cars as well.

Wishing you a very Happy Chhath Puja. May Maa fulfill all our wishes and bless us with abundance, peace and unity.
28/10/2025

Wishing you a very Happy Chhath Puja. May Maa fulfill all our wishes and bless us with abundance, peace and unity.

Address

Jayanagar
Guwahati
781022

Telephone

+916003747123

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