Jet Airways Founder, Tesla Auto Backer Electrify TiE

Jet Airways founder and chairman Naresh Goyal provided the inspirational success story and entrepreneur Elon Musk the dynamic entrance at the annual conference of The Indus Entrepreneurs May 16-17.
The 58-year-old Goyal regaled a huge audience in the Santa Clara Convention Center auditorium with the saga of his meteoric rise from someone who could barely afford to pay his school fees to the builder and innovator of India’s largest private airline.
Musk, whose three current ventures after co-founding and being the largest stockholder of PayPal encompass making electric cars, space travel and solar energy, electrified the TiE conference by driving his new 2008 Tesla Roadster into the auditorium.
Not since former San Francisco 49er quarterback Steve Young keynoted TiE in 2003, have so many TiE attendees rushed forward to the stage after a talk.
The avuncular Goyal, who seemed to be smiling with a twinkle in his eye throughout the keynote panel, described how he has kept a single-minded focus on building an airline that is “the best of the best.” Jet Airways will one day be recognized as one of the “five best airlines in the world in reliability and service,” he predicted.
From a poor background, Goyal, now listed among Forbes magazine’s top billionaires, described walking to school and not being able to pay his school fees and receiving a huge lift when he got his first bicycle.
He started in the airline business literally at the bottom, working as a baggage handler for Lebanese International Airline at the Beirut airport.
23/05/08 Richard Springer/San Leandro India West, USA

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Categories: Foreign May 2008, Jet Airways May 2008