Changing the colour of the skies - making transformation a habit

Capt. Gopinath is Managing Director of Air Deccan, a unit of Deccan Aviation Private Limited, India’s largest private heli-charter company. A graduate of the National Defence Academy, he has served in the army. Gopinath also has to his credit, the Rolex award for ecological site farming and is also the recipient of the Wipro PRSI Award.

What is transformation?
Rapid change perceived as desirable only after it has happened.

Act I Scene I: Transformation of land

Just out of the army, Capt.Gopinath returned to his village in Karnataka to find that his family's land had been acquired due to the construction of a dam over a nearby river. The land allotted to his family as compensation was arid and was widely perceived as uncultivatable. With no other options in sight, he packed rations, a rifle, his army tent, his pet dog and travelled with one farm labourer to the allotted land.

He toiled day and night and planted coconut saplings as also other plants. Plants were selected and positioned after carefully analysing the soil and the geography. After months of toiling, (during which he used to be ridiculed by others for toiling on dry land) the land started showing it's innate potential. The carefully planned planting of fast growing trees helped bind the soil. The now homogenous soil began retaining water. The 'uncultivatable' land seemed to have woken up from deep slumber! To this day, his farm is known for not using pesticides and the like. It 'lives and grows naturally' and needless to say, keeps Gopi's accountant very busy.

Act I Scene II: Transformation of silk production
With his farm yeilding results, Capt.Gopinath started considering silk farming as a viable business. He found that using bamboo as a substrate for rearing silk worms was something that no one else had thought of and implemented. Using bamboo racks for rearing silk worms cut costs drastically and improved yields since bamboo made the racks sturdier and made them usable over multiple rearing cycles. This one innovation is lauded to this day and earned Gopi the Prestigious ROLEX award for ecological site farming.

Act II Scene I: Heli business
One of his sojourns to his farms was with a colleague from his army days in an army helicopter. He loved the experience. The then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh extended an open invite to entrepreneurs in one of his drives to boost the economy. The ever vigilant Captain spotted the business potential in starting a heli-charter company. Gopi and his friends rented a helicopter and flew it down into Hyderabad one foggy morning. They went straight to the CM's residence - because they did not know where else to go! Deccan Aviation won it's first client. Today, Deccan Aviation is India's largest helicopter operator next only to the defense services! With bases across the country, they have offered variants in their services such as heli-ambulance.

Act II Scene II: Flying a billion people
On one of his trips to the US, he learnt that the number of persons that flew annually there was higher than the population of of two states in india put together. The model of Ryan Air and Southwest airlines drew his attention. That was enough to launch him into what would lead to the transformation of the Indian skies - Air Deccan

The Indian aviation sector had witnessed the shakeout of the 90s and people considered aviation as a business where you could become a millionaire very easily - if you entered the business as a billionaire in the first place. The well networked lobby controlled the prices of air tickets and a one way ticket from Bangalore to Delhi costed anywhere from Rs.8000 to Rs. 20000. All this was to change.

Air Deccan's business model was different,.... quite different
Smaller aircraft such as ATRs with higher fuel efficiency were inducted. Smaller aircrafts meant lower landing and parking fees and quicker turnaround times. Quicker turnaround times meant longer times in the skies, which meant higher revenues ("an aircraft earns money only when flying not when parked in the bay" as Gopi says). Aircraft space was for sale for advertising. For the first time, you could see NDTV on the tail cone of an aircraft, Sun Microsystems near the landing gear, Chevrolet on headrests of seats and Wipro under the cockpit fuselage! Pilots had to pay for their training, airhostesses got a share of the revenue earned from sales on board and the HR team was two members strong for the first year of operations!

When asked about competition from the other airlines, Gopi categorically stated that his actual competition was from the railways! (This seems to have been proved right with the Railway Minister recently announcing a second round of fare cuts for AC class tickets)

Nothing is free on an Air Deccan flight. When asked "Surely, you can at least offer water?", he had this to say: "Look, we flew 1.5 million passengers last year. If we made provisions for free water, it would have been consumed by the flight crew, the airport staff and others as well. In the process, we would have ended up spending Rs 3 crore on water alone. It is not feasible for us. We need to educate the customers instead of asking them what is on their wish list. If you need something, you may as well pay for it. In this way, we have been able to save 20 per cent on distribution costs and turned our cost centres into revenue centres."

A strong focus on costs made it possible to introduce tickets for fares of Re.1 and Rs.500. Even today, the taxes are often higher than the ticket cost on an Air Deccan flight!

Has he succeeded at transforming the Indian skies? You bet!! From one aircraft and two routes a day, Air Deccan has grown to a fleet of 36 aircraft. It offers 270 flights a day and 55 destinations across the country at a 98% ontime performance. All this in three years flat.

The Impact
Indian skies have changed colour. New airlines such as Spicejet, Go, Indigo, Kingfisher, Paramount and Air India Express have made their appearance in what was considered a 'closed' industry. Today, the average price of a ticket from Bangalore to Delhi is around Rs.2500. Check fares have made their appearance. Airports are being modernised. Interior towns that were economically soporific are twitching their noses at the waft from freshly minted green papyrus.

Capt. Gopinath seems to have changed the altitude (and attitude?) of flying in India. Like he says "making a billion dreams fly".