The country's biggest airline by market share 'IndiGo' has filed for an Initial Public Offer (IPO) and is looking to raise Rs 2,000 -2,500 crore through the same. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, PWC's Rajiv Mathew says there is a lot of scope in the Indian market for more airlines to enter. However, Mathew believes the government should ease many regulations in order to allow better functioning of the airline companies. Below is the verbatim transcript of Dhiraj Mathur’s interveiw with Anuj Singhal and Reema Tendulkar on CNBC-TV18. Anuj: We have seen quite a bit of interest coming back in the aviation space, a large part of this was what happened to crude prices but do you think this kind of interest is sustainable? A: Certainly it is sustainable. Looking at the long run this is a very promising sector in India. It is a highly underserved market, I would say it is less than 3 percent of our population flies. We have something like one plane per 2 million population whereas the US has something like one plane per 50,000. If you try and travel across country, if you try and travel between Delhi and Mumbai or some of the other cities, it is very difficult, it is almost impossible to get a train ticket unless you book months in advance. So, there is certainly a huge market, huge untapped market, there is a huge unmet demand. It is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity, it is necessary for business, it is necessary for tourism, for leisure. So, the market is certainly there. There are some fundamentals that have been impeding the growth and profitability of airlines. These are well known – ATF prices and the taxes. Some of those issues have been addressed partially. Global crude prices have fallen so that has been good news for the industry and the basic point is that Indigo about whom we are talking today, they have made profit from year one. They have had three or four digits profit on every year of their operations. So, clearly there is money to be made and therefore the interest that we are seeing is certainly in my view sustainable.
30/06/15 CNBC-TV18/moneycontrol.com
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30/06/15 CNBC-TV18/moneycontrol.com
