On a Friday evening, Sanjay Surana, a builder from Surat, was excited to travel to Bhavnagar for a darshan of his spiritual guru. As Surana queued up with eight of his co-passengers for security check, he was thankful that Ventura AirConnect, which operates a fleet of 9-seater Cessna, had reduced the travel time between the two cities from 8-10 hours to just 20 minutes.
"Visiting Bhavnagar for a day's work would never have been possible through road,” says Surana, a regular flier of the airline owned by Diamond Aeronautics Pvt Ltd. Trains are the least preferred as they take the longest.
Set up by four diamond merchants from Surat, the airline took off in December 2014. They wanted to connect Saurashtra with Surat, the hub of the diamond polishing industry. Over 80 per cent of the industry’s workforce is from the villages of Saurashtra, mainly Bhavnagar and Amreli. After Surat, it is rural Saurashtra that shines the most in the diamond polishing trade.
The Saurashtra connect
It is the economic mainstay of the region, employing about half a million. The rough diamonds travel from Belgium to Surat after a series of checks and clearances. After the sorting of rough diamonds, the ‘rural grade’ – those easier to polish and monitor -- are sent to rural Saurashtra, mostly through an angadia (a sort of courier service), while the complex ones are kept back to be polished under the monitoring of the owner.
15/07/15 Rutam Vora/Business Line
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"Visiting Bhavnagar for a day's work would never have been possible through road,” says Surana, a regular flier of the airline owned by Diamond Aeronautics Pvt Ltd. Trains are the least preferred as they take the longest.
Set up by four diamond merchants from Surat, the airline took off in December 2014. They wanted to connect Saurashtra with Surat, the hub of the diamond polishing industry. Over 80 per cent of the industry’s workforce is from the villages of Saurashtra, mainly Bhavnagar and Amreli. After Surat, it is rural Saurashtra that shines the most in the diamond polishing trade.
The Saurashtra connect
It is the economic mainstay of the region, employing about half a million. The rough diamonds travel from Belgium to Surat after a series of checks and clearances. After the sorting of rough diamonds, the ‘rural grade’ – those easier to polish and monitor -- are sent to rural Saurashtra, mostly through an angadia (a sort of courier service), while the complex ones are kept back to be polished under the monitoring of the owner.
15/07/15 Rutam Vora/Business Line
