Aviation continues to be a highly under-penetrated market with lots of opportunities, says Akasa Air

A: In some ways, nothing changes in our business. It remains as exciting as always. But actually, what has also not changed is that aviation continues to be a highly underpenetrated market with lots of opportunities. And, from the current environment, or for that matter, the post-pandemic rush, what is quite evident is that the fundamental need for people to travel did not change gives us the opportunity to continue to build an airline, which is focused, disciplined, efficient, warm, friendly. And that's what's probably made us the fastest-growing startup airline in global aviation history. So got up to a good start, I would say.

A: We started off with a 72 aircraft order. And then this summer, we added another four aircraft to that fleet. So we are up to 76 firm order now. And we're in the midst of ordering or in the midst of finalising an order for another, at least a triple-digit order. So let's take a minimum — it's going to be at least 100. So, that's 176 airplanes (on order). That would be an order before this year is out. And we think that it is going to cater to this massive burgeoning demand in the aviation sector for the long period to come.

A: No, not really. We don't have a market share target. I truly believe that market share is an easy one to chase but doesn't put food on your table. I think what's important is to make sure that you run a ferociously low-cost structure and the most efficient and warm and friendly product, which then does two things. It helps you offer affordable fares consistently to your customers, and customers like the efficiency and the friendliness. So they follow and market share grows automatically. So what we are focused on is making sure that we bring in capacity with discipline, we are up to 20 airplanes now in our first year of operation, and we will be 25 airplanes in the next few months. We have international operations that we are pursuing over the next few months. So I think if we continue to do this, market share will follow. That's not what we chase.

A: Probably two or three different elements. One is that the Indian aviation market continues to have a symbiotic relationship with the overall growth in the economy, which is great. So if India continues to move towards a $5 trillion economy, we benefit from that.

The second is that what has also changed dramatically in the last 15 years is the demographic of the consumer has changed. So the fact that 67 percent of our population is under the age of 35 makes a good fundamental story for us to build a product that is young, and that is efficient, and so on and so forth.

And the third is that airport infrastructure has improved a lot. From 15 years back when it was a challenge to figure out where you're going to park airplanes, India is going to open up 70 new airports in the next two years. So directionally the demand, a stable yield environment, high load factors and an infrastructure that is catching up with that demand is what's helping us. But at the same time, one has to remember that in 2006, this country had 110 commercial airplanes and 1.1 billion people as their population. We added 300 million people, but we haven't even added 400 new commercial airplanes in the country. We still have less number of airplanes as an industry than Southwest Airlines in the US. So just a huge opportunity and we are still in our infancy.

A: We're the fastest airline in India ever to have reached the point at which we are going to start international operations. We think that the five to six-hour range is ideally suited not just to our type of aircraft, but also where the demand sits — the SAARC countries, Middle East and Southeast Asia. We are beginning to get our 200s, the Boeing 737 MAX 8-200.  Our 20th aircraft was the 200. So, even in our original 76 aircraft order, two-thirds of it is the higher capacity 200s. So, therefore, this is an aircraft that lends perfectly to chasing this international demand.

Now, having said that, we will always chase profitability and growth wherever the domestic and international operations take us. And given that we are a single fleet type, very disciplined sort of operation, it gives us a huge amount of fungibility to move capacity between international and domestic. We don't have to start thinking about multiple different types of aircraft, multiple different types of crew, and so on and so forth.