Travel agent to airline operator

Every travel agent dreams of starting an airline, says Rajji Rai, President of the Travel Agents Association of India, India’s leading travel agents body. “Only two who started in the travel agency business, Rahul Bhatia and Naresh Goyal, have actually succeeded,” he adds.
Even if Goyal’s star has lost some of its twinkle in recent years, Bhatia’s seems to be on the ascendant. His airline IndiGo is now the most profitable in the country.
Not much was known about its profitability, as the company is not obliged to make its numbers known. Civil aviation minister Praful Patel revealed some of the financials this November in a reply to a parliamentary question. Low cost carrier (LCC) IndiGo and the much smaller regional carrier Paramount were the only two airlines in India that had made a profit in 2008-2009. IndiGo made Rs. 82 crore, while Paramount notched up Rs. 7 crore.
In a business meant for the big boys Bhatia has surprised everyone. Though the last of the networked carriers to take off in 2006, IndiGo is now India’s largest LCC. Its offering focussed on a fresh-clean product, a decent on-time performance and fabulous sandwiches, has attracted a faithful following. Now nobody knows how this has happened and Bhatia isn’t helping. He says he doesn’t think that way. Probe harder and all you get is: “Honesty of purpose which comes from my parents, luck and destiny.” Bhatia is very reticent and this allows him to move unnoticed and surprise people.
At the Paris air show in the summer of 2005 an unexpected development that created ripples was a $6 billion order for 100 planes by an Indian travel technology firm called InterGlobe Enterprises. The order was for its airline venture called IndiGo that had not even been launched. Everyone scrambled to find who was taking such a big bet.
They needn’t have bothered. The InterGlobe promoter and managing director Rahul Bhatia, had given the event a miss.
Actually, Interglobe’s forerunner Delhi Express, a small airline representation firm is a good place to start with to understand Bhatia. Kapil Bhatia, Rahul’s father, started Delhi Express with a partner. It was a well-run airline representation firm, but remained small. After Rahul Bhatia returned from Canada with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Ontario and a two-year stint with IBM, he decided to scale up operations and started InterGlobe Enterprises.
22/12/09 Forbes India/Moneycontrol.com

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Categories: IndiGo Airlines Dec 2009