Captain Gopinath Shares his Entrepreneurial Journey with ISB Students

Captain Gopinath Shares his Entrepreneurial Journey with ISB Students

A period before that, shared Captain Gopinath, there was not a single helicopter in India for public charter. "It was my dream to erase that aura of formidableness and make helicopters as accessible as a taxi," he said. The company grew along with the Captain’s dreams and today is the largest helicopter company in the country with 8 bases.

He also saw other applications of the helicopter, other than chartering politicians and film stars - medical evacuation, geo-physical survey, in mining, etc., - in fact, Air Deccan is the only company that does geo-physical survey in India, he pointed out.

Around the same time as his helicopter enterprise took off, the country was awakening into a 'new, resurgent, optimistic nation'. It was during one of his trips from Goa to Bangalore on a helicopter that he witnessed a drastic change in rural landscape - dish antennas sticking out from mud huts.

It was a time of aspirations for New India, and Gopinath realised that to build a successful business, it needed to be inclusive of the 'Other' India. Airline tickets were outside the aspiration of the Indian middle class - Gopinath translated this aspiration into a scalable business plan - to tap the 250 million odd middle class in India. "Here was an opportunity to change the economic landscape of the country - there were around 500 airfields in this country that were unconnected, there were these small towns that were straining for connectivity - we decided to tap this potential area, and translated it into a scalable business model," shared the Captain.

Today Air Deccan has 45 aircrafts flying 350 flights every day, bigger than Indian Airlines in scale. It also has the largest route network in the country covering 66 cities. It is the New India that is flying, according to Captain Gopinath. In addition, it is the largest e-commercial site in India and buying an airline ticket has become 'as easy as buying your grocery'.

"Listen to that inner prompting and have allegiance to that one dream, hold on to it, step up the stairs," was the mantra to the future entrepreneurs at the ISB from one of the greatest entrepreneurs of recent India.

Concluded.

Contributed by -
Ms. Bhuvana Ramalingam,
Director - Communications,
Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

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