Shelley Vishwajeet - The IndiGo Story: Inside the Upstart that Redefined Indian Aviation

Published by

Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2018

7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

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Copyright Shelley Vishwajeet 2018

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts are as reported by them which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

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ISBN: 978-81-291-XXXX-X

First impression 2018

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To the spirit of Indian entrepreneurship which keeps blossoming despite many odds!

Contents

Foreword

Indian aviation has arrived and IndiGo has played a big role in rescripting it. The story of IndiGo is certainly a tale worth narrating, and worth reading!

Ive personally been witness to IndiGos growth story since 2006 and I believe its account must be told, albeit with maturity, analytics, balance and along with a sizable portion of reticence. I had also been aware for a while that a book on IndiGo was in the making but I had my own scepticism! And Ill tell you why. For starters, its very important to identify an author who not only has a deep, intrinsic knowledge of the airline business but also has the ability and maturity to present the IndiGo phenomenon in a clear, insightful manner minus the hype, rhetoric and melodramasomeone who can be a dispassionate business analyst and a lucid writer at the same time.

So I was delightfully surprised when my good friend and industry colleague, Shelley Vishwajeet, a recognized journalistand someone Ive known for many years nowcalled me one evening informing me that he has been tasked with penning down The IndiGo Story. He is one of the few around who could do justice to the IndiGo story. Gladly, I jumped on it with as much support to Shelley as possible.

IndiGo took flight in 2006, which was certainly not the most conducive time to get into aviation business. Against all odds, IndiGos nonconformist promoters Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal had the self belief to get their airline up and runningand what a journey it has been! Whats interesting is not only did they live through the toughest of times, they stood out, won the loyalty, wallet and the heart of the Indian flyers like no other airline till date and lived to tell the tale. IndiGos story interests, captivates, attracts and fascinates one with awe because it is probably the closest example weve had in Indian aviation of a disrupter who broke biases, myths, absurdities and idiosyncrasies of the industry like no other. At the same time, it was trying to compete with the Indian Railways, closer to when oil had hit $120 on the barrel, on one hand and mightier airline competitors on the other; and yet succeeded with making the best of what it had in its arsenalakin to Arjuna in Kurukshetra taking on adversaries both mightier and more powerful than himself!

Having been part of the leadership and management with several airlines in the past in India, the Middle East and South East Asia, I can tell you that the cyclical airline business requires patience, resilience, aggressiveness, being lean and agileall at the same time. IndiGo, in its march to the top, displayed all these attributes in ample measure.

The uniqueness of IndiGo comes with its ability to listen and adapt to what the new generation of Indians want from air travel. Air travel in India till 2005 was mostly tailored to the more mature (and ridged) Baby Boomers, Yuppie, Hippie and GenX. By the time IndiGo came, a new restless demographic cohort called millennials had arrived, and India was on the go. This generation looked at air travel just as another mode of transport, albeit quicker. For this fast-moving generation, air travel was a necessity. IndiGo listened to them and appealed to them. More than a decade later, IndiGo continues to appeal to the newer generation of flyersthe swipe-left-right generation as I call themand is now busy scripting a new story for itself in the international sky.

The IndiGo Story is a first-of-its-kind book on Indian aviation and you will gain an in-depth understanding of the airline business while uncovering IndiGos success recipes. I congratulate Shelley for his superlative efforts. I am witness to the extensive hours he put in with research, historic data, fact finding and reviewing documents that themselves were more than fifteen years old, bringing all this together for us to cherish for years to come.

To close, I am deeply humbled to be asked to write this Foreword and I am sure you will enjoy reading this bookwhich in its core is a celebration of the never say die spirit of aviation and entrepreneurship.

Mark D. Martin
Founder and CEO
Martin Consulting
mark@martincnsulting.aero

Introduction

Not many here in India are aware of Vik Kachoria and Anutosh Moitra. Well, Vik is the founder and CEO of a Boston-based company called Spike Aerospace, which is at the forefront of developing the worlds first quiet supersonic commercial jet that can cut flight times by half. The first jet of this kind could take off as early as 2023. Anutosh, as Spikes chief technology officer, is leading a big team of top aerospace engineers, both in-house and from its collaborating firms such as Greenpoint Technologies, Siemens, MAYA, Aernnova and Quartus Engineering, to ensure speedy development of this revolutionary new air vehicle.

Vik and Anutosh represent the finest aviation and entrepreneurial spirit of Indians, who have, time and again, proved that given a supporting and enabling environmentand at times even without itthey can be world leaders and truly inspirational. The IndiGo Story is also a tale of this spirit.

Indians fascination with the sky has been immense and since time immemorial. Some of the greatest contributions to astronomy have been made by Indiansfrom pre-Vedic times till today. Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Varahamihira, Bhaskar I and II, Lalla, Mahendra Suri and Nilakantha Somayaji in olden times to Maharaja Jai Singh II in the more recent middle age. Somewhere in between, Indians had lost the scientific and exploratory zeal, thanks largely to historical and religious factors. But when opportunities came knocking again, with the sky opening up once again, the hibernating genes of scientific and entrepreneurship zeal awoke with full gusto. So we saw the rise of brilliant people like Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Satish Dhawan, APJ Abdul Kalam, and NASA stalwarts such as Meyya Meyyappan and Kamlesh Lulla.