Ankit Gupta, the India CEO of hospitality technology platform Oyo, and Mandar Vaidya, the head of Oyo’s European operations, will both be moving on from the company.
25.08.2023 - 14:45 / skift.com / Peden Doma Bhutia
Clearly Vinod Kannan, the CEO of Vistara, may have had to field this question on the possible Vistara-Air India merger one too many times.
And while his immediate response was a — “I really don’t know what is happening,” he quickly went on to add, “Not that I want to evade the question, but there are certain discussions that are happening which I’m not privy to.”
Kanan said this is a question more for the shareholders. Tata owns 51 percent of the airline while Singapore Airlines owns the remaining 49 percent.
A Singapore Airlines veteran, Kannan joined Vistara as the chief strategy officer in 2019 and was made the chief commercial officer in 2020. In January, he was elevated to the ranks of the CEO.
Commenting on the merger, Kannan added that he and his team are focused on Vistara’s progress, “I tell my team that no matter what, the 54 aircraft that we have will have to be serviced, sold and operated. Until we are told otherwise, we will maintain that we will be operating independently.”
In conversation with Skift, Kannan talks about the future of Vistara — the only other full-service carrier in India, after Air India and how it is to operate a full-service airline in a market dominated by the low-cost model.
The comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Skift: The second quarter of the financial year from July to September is traditionally not the strongest quarter for airlines. But, Vistara cracked this period and has also gone on to increase its market share. What worked in your favour?
Vinod Kannan: That element of revenge travel has indeed worked for us. Stuck at home for long, people wanted to travel a bit more than they would normally have and this continued during the July-September period. During the Covid period, we also launched many campaigns to instill confidence among customers.
And then we also expanded internationally in the last two years. We now have daily flights to London, and flights to Frankfurt, Paris, that has also added to the numbers.
The revenue performance has been very strong as the demand and market share have all been very positive. However, much as revenue has been very strong, cost has also been pretty high this quarter. High fuel cost, plus the depreciation of the Indian rupee has had a significant impact on cost.
Skift: Vistara had earlier been looking at a one-stop U.S. connection. Would you be keen to take that forward?
Kannan: The aircraft that we have do not allow us to do a non-stop to the U.S. because of the configuration and the specifications. Yes, we were looking at a one-stop into the US and that’s something that we will look at again depending on when the aircraft comes in. Before making any plans, we want to be certain of the delivery dates
Ankit Gupta, the India CEO of hospitality technology platform Oyo, and Mandar Vaidya, the head of Oyo’s European operations, will both be moving on from the company.
Only 25% of Indians traveling abroad purchase travel insurance well in advance while making travel arrangements, while the majority of them wait until the last three days to buy it, according to data compiled by insurance aggregator Policybazaar.
Antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Tata group’s plan to merge its full-service carriers Air India and Vistara.
Malaysia’s Capital A will not be merging its airlines, but will instead move all the carriers under one existing structure, similar to how British Airways, Iberia Airline, and Aer Lingus operate under the International Airlines Group umbrella, said CEO Tony Fernandes on Monday.
Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines have agreed to consolidate Air India and Vistara by March 2024.
AirAsia Aviation Group on Friday announced a joint venture with Cambodia-based Sivilai Asia to launch a new low-cost carrier — AirAsia Cambodia.
India is making a PCR Covid test mandatory for inbound arrivals from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, from January 1.
Indian carrier Vistara reported its first-ever net profit for the quarter ending December 2022, according to statement from the airline on Monday.
The Tatas will let go of Indian full-service carrier Vistara as they look to merge the airline with the more “internationally-recognized” Air India, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said on Monday.
India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third most powerful travel and tourism market by 2032, according to World Travel and Tourism Council’s Economic Impact Research.
India will invest around $12 billion over the next two years in airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet the booming demand for air travel. The country aims to increase the number of airports from the present 148 to 220 by 2025, for which private builders will contribute roughly $9 billion, with the balance coming from the government-run Airports Authority of India. It entails new terminal construction, greenfield projects, and refurbishment of existing buildings, including old military airfields from the colonial era, as per a Bloomberg report. “We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” said the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at the ongoing CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi. Scindia said passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million today, and Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700. Additionally, India has eased leasing rules for airlines to lease more aircraft to address aircraft shortages as travel rebounds from the pandemic. He also highlighted how India had tweaked its airplane leasing program to enable airlines to add more aircraft to meet passenger demand, including more “wet leasing,” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes. Tata Group-owned Air India last month announced a record order for 470 jets and is due to take another 25 leased aircraft.
Indian companies have failed to set targets to reduce corporate travel emissions, according to an annual report by campaign group Transport & Environment. Globally, only 50 companies out of 322 have set targets to reduce business travel, with information technology (IT) services company Wipro paving the way in India. Wipro has achieved a 15-20 percent reduction in air travel emissions between the 2015 and 2020 period. Among all 10 Indian companies featured in the ranking report, only IT services provider Tech Mahindra reports on air travel emissions specifically. “Advancements taking place in India are mostly being led by the technology industry. We invite these technology companies to continue to work on their travel policies and demonstrate leadership to catalyze change in other industries,” said Denise Auclair, corporate travel manager at Transport & Environment. Of the companies that have targets, only four companies meet the “gold standard” of reporting air travel emissions and commitment to reducing them by 50 percent or more, by 2025 or sooner. These are Novo Nordisk (pharmaceuticals, Denmark), Swiss Re (finance, Switzerland), Fidelity International (finance, Britain) and ABN Amro (finance, the Netherlands).