A flight into sunset

New Delhi: Captain GR Gopinath burst upon the scene when he floated Air Deccan, India’s first low-cost carrier, some time in 2003. Without a doubt, it was he who brought air travel to the masses. Till then, it was something only for the well-heeled. But he ran it ineptly. For quite some time, there were long flight delays which made airports worse than a fish market. It didn’t get any better once you boarded an Air Deccan aircraft. As there was no seat number on the tickets, there would invariably be a fair amount of jostling for the aisle seats in the front rows.
The business idea was great but the business model wasn’t. In less than five years, the airline had totted up huge losses, Vjay Mallya had come on board as an investor, and Gopinath was out of the company he had founded.
There was no way Gopinath’s autobiography could have been a dull read. And to be fair, Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey is a competent piece of work — indulgent in places, under-edited, inadequate in some details, yet racy and engaging. Let’s go through my grouse list first. One, the Air Deccan story begins after you have trudged through no fewer than 250 pages. Of the 380 pages, Gopinath has devoted only about 100 pages to the airline that brought him out of obscurity and gave him his share of fame. Wish there was more on Air Deccan and less on the rest of the stuff.
Two, Gopinath never mentions, right through the book, how much money he made in his various ventures. He explains in great detail how he set up each business with very little money. Admirable, but what were the returns? Maybe that’s not important in the story of an entrepreneur. Success has many measures; money is just one of them. But the picture is incomplete without it. Let me not build a case against the book. It is lucid and rich with personal detail, though the narrative rambles at some stretches.
17/02/10 Bhupesh Bhandari/Business Standard

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Categories: Deccan Aviation Feb 2010, Indian Aviation- In General Feb 2010