Andreas Schörling (pictured, above left) has been associated with FlixBus UK since it entered the market, and alongside a dynamic team, has been credited with the brand’s strong growth in the scheduled coach field.
But everything comes to an end, and Andreas has now handed over leadership to his successor and the UK business’s next Managing Director, Shamil Maindiratta (pictured, above right).
While Shamil is new to the coach field, she brings a background in another of FlixBus’s areas of strength: technology. With Goldman Sachs on her CV, she later spent nine years with Amazon until joining the green team. Time at Amazon captured the brand’s core retail business, advertising, and payments. Her tenure concluded with heading a European and US team.
Amazon is a digitally-native business, and so is FlixBus. “A common thread is that I have been excited by building something scalable. That is where my opportunity now comes,” she explains. As part of that, Shamil underlines the long-held ambition of Andreas to build FlixBus into the UK’s largest scheduled coach network.
Significant expansion came earlier this month. Speaking shortly before his departure, Andreas described that as capturing uplifts to the “core relations” of route provision. Equally, rather than adding many new operator partners to deliver increases, the business’s favour now sits with leveraging existing relationships to add vehicles. That has already led to several of those upping their commitment.
“We now have a really strong cohort – over 20,” he continues. “They are spread across the country and are high-quality businesses. Each reflects the values and ambitions of FlixBus.” If those operators were placed on a map, their locations would broadly reflect where FlixBus identified a need for hubs in building a national network.
Meeting operator partners a priority for new FlixBus UK chief
Nevertheless, the business is still open to discussions with potential partners that share a growth agenda, although adding them “is not a given,” Andreas says. Size of those businesses does not influence any factor in how they are ranked or considered, Shamil stresses.
She has already visited operators, and that relationship-building exercise will continue. Growing up in India, she was surrounded by a family business dynamic – and the country’s huge coach industry – before entering the corporate world.
“My highest priority is to go out and meet partners and see their operations on the ground. That is something I will be doing over the next couple of months.” Maintaining the dialogue is a further imperative for the new MD. “You cannot have a partnership without an open-door policy. We need to be transparent on our challenges and opportunities, and that will come via strong, timely communication.”
Modal shift the focus in driving business growth
Also shared with Andreas is Shamil’s position on where growth in customer numbers will come from and how that will lean on modal shift. FlixBus has seen particular appeal to younger travellers drawn from cars and rail.
“If our plan was just to take a larger slice of the same pie, that would not be ambitious enough,” Shamil observes. “Instead, if we are to create sustainability, we need to attract customers who never thought about coach before.” The partnership dynamic is central to that, too, she continues.
Amazon has drawn a lot of its success from focus on what customers will want in two or three years’ time, Shamil says. “That is where the longevity comes from. It is about what will be the future of that space. There are similarities with what I have already seen at FlixBus. It has that level of drive on the ground as well as a future-looking view into what our customers will demand later.”
‘A lot of green’ left as a legacy by Andreas Schörling
With her FlixBus journey at its start, what might success look like for Shamil later? April’s network expansion rolling out successfully and efficiently, and delivering what is forecast, would be a big tick in that box, as would being able to draw on a long-term approach and understand what the next three- to five-year period looks like and aligning that with partner operators.
“At every point, if it looks like we still have more to achieve, that is a sign of success,” she continues. A large brand campaign to follow one staged previously is in hand to drive the message home. Shamil adds that her early days in coach have shown “a segment that is ripe for growth.”
For Andreas, his time with the business has come to an end after driving its UK arm from a start-up status to the current position. He now returns to Stockholm with his young family. “When we said we would do this… people were sceptical whether we would achieve it,” he points out. Now, when travelling on motorways, “there is a lot of green.”
Andreas agrees with Shamil that coaches and coach services still have much opportunity ahead of them. Airports are highlighted, as are younger demographics. He pays tribute to the FlixBus UK team – but for now, will be cheering their efforts from the sidelines after handing over the baton.
