Travel was never the first career choice for Rahul!

After completing his degree he had come back to India with an aim to set up a telecom venture with Nortel to make digital telephone exchanges.

But since the government at that time, didn’t favor foreign technology, that project didn’t see the daylight.

During that time, Rahul’s father used to run an airline agency called Delhi Express, which he had cofounded along with nine partners in 1964.

Even though, Rahul wanted to opt for teaching as a career, looking at his father’s health he took the emotional decision of joining the family business in 1988.

Towards the end of 1991, Rahul and his father discovered that some of the partners had managed to gain the majority stake in the company by secretly buying more equity in the company. Post this, Rahul and his father were asked to leave the company.

All the problems falling at the same time, Rahul realized that he needed to will have to plunge into the business with full-steam, and decided to start over with $37,000 as seed capital.

All he had with him was a degree along with a two-year stint at IBM. And with that in hand, he started InterGlobe!

But InterGlobe wasn’t IndiGo back then. It was, what is now called InterGlobe Technologies, that took care of their IT Services and BPO section, which mainly specialized in travel, transportation, and hospitality.

It started off with rough days, with cash crunches every now and then!

But, the power of relationships triumphed and all the airlines whose business had been with the old company moved to InterGlobe without exception.

In 1994, they also managed to gain the all-India franchise for what is now Galileo International (an airline reservation system), and then a Joint Venture with them to provide back-office services in 1999, as well.

Over the period of time, he transformed it into a conglomerate with interests in travel technology, hospitality, business jets, and retail, etc…!

While at it, Rahul also developed a close friendship with Rakesh Gangwal (CEO, US Airways). This is when he started to make ground for the next leap of starting his own airline.

Rahul and his father had been talking about starting an airline, but Rakesh was somehow hesitant of getting into the business, due to the high mortality rate of the industry.

The persistent man that he was, Rahul waited till he convinced Rakesh. Once he was convinced, the together they applied for the airline license in 2004 and started IndiGo Airlines!

How did he build the IndiGo Empire?
The airline license was acquired in 2004, but the company didn’t take off until 2006!

IndiGo was a jointly owned entity by Rahul Bhatia of InterGlobe Enterprises and Rakesh Gangwal of Caelum Investments. InterGlobe owned 51.12% stake and Caelum Investments held 48% in IndiGo.

With aviation, fuel prices soaring, and the rupee dropping, these were some of the most difficult days for the Indian airline industry. When industry leaders like Kingfisher Airlines, SpiceJet and Jet, were bleeding money, Rahul took a bold step to enter the market at such a time.

To top that, he made headlines and shocked everyone when he went shopping and ordered 100 Airbus A320-200 aircraft, at $6.5 billion at the Paris Air Show in 2005. This was when IndiGo had not even been launched.

#IndigoAirlines #RahulBhatia #EconimcalAirlines

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