Trailblazers: Dream merchants: Air Deccan

Air Deccan, in spite of scepticism and intense criticism, did the unthinkable: making flying affordable for the common man

Captain Gorur R Iyengar Gopinath, chairman and managing director of the heli-charter firm, Deccan Aviation, was quite enthused while sharing with us the inspiration behind launching Air Deccan.

One fine day, Captain Gopinath, as he is popularly known, was aboard a helicopter, flying over some villages when he found a peculiar sight the mud houses in villages had large dish-antennae sticking out of them. The image stayed with Gopinath as a metaphor of a new India which was emerging - an India full of self-confidence, an India that was demanding better facilities, and the creation of a single caste: the consuming caste. "As someone said, 'vision is the art of seeing the invisible'. We are the fourth largest economy in the world and in a country like that, middle class people ought to be able to fly!" says Gopinath on what prompted him to start Air Deccan, the country's first low-cost airline. Roughly around one per cent of the Indian population was flying at that time, with only 13 million air tickets sold in 2002. By 2008, the figure had increased to 50 million.

Air Deccan wished to get to 30 towns that had never been reached by aircrafts before - places like Jamnagar, Kullu and Manali; the idea was to take flying beyond metros. Needless to say, this would generate a huge buzz in these cities otherwise unconnected by air. And all this was to be achieved at affordable ticket prices. There were many hurdles before Air Deccan: the need to create more airports, aircraft facilities, dealing with government restrictions and of course, the challenge of getting people to forego trains and buses, and travel by air.

For marketing Air Deccan, Gopinath and team stayed away from a brand ambassador, as this would be a disconnect while explaining the concept of first-time flying to a common man. Gopinath chanced on a cartoon by RK Laxman which showed the common man, a villager (with his feet up on the seat and a bamboo stick in hand) and a city guy in a suit, all travelling on an Air Deccan flight, where the city guy tells the common man, "I'm not a snob, but if these airlines drop their fares any lower, I'm travelling by train!"

Gopinath immediately called Laxman and brainstormed on how the common man could become the mascot for Air Deccan. The fact that the airline for a brief period was selling tickets at a starting price of Re 1 brought the whole country in a state of frenzy: some wondered if it was a gimmick or had a catch to it. Gopinath's mantra was simple: with flights going empty as it is, the volume game was the way out. Once planes were filled, the revenue would come, was the mantra. "Our highest fare was Rs 3,000 or so," recalls Gopinath. Air Deccan, post 'The Old Man and The Sky' TV commercial, didn't do clever advertising, and chose instead to highlight its low fares.

Air Deccan deployed one new aircraft a month for 45 months. In four years, the brand was going to more cities than Indian Airlines had in decades. Slowly, big players started following suit with low-cost airline models.

A need for more investments and a huge shortage of airport space had Air Deccan looking for partners, when Dr Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher invested Rs 1,000 crore in the company and took over. This was at a price that was 30 per cent higher than its market price. Mallya stated from the very beginning that he would 'jazz it up' and 'sex it up' by indulging customers with some frills. On the other hand, Gopinath's detractors didn't spare a moment to conclude that this move was inevitable, as Air Deccan's model was bound to be "implausible in the long run."

Air Deccan became Simplifly Deccan and finally, Kingfisher Red. Clearly, the 'flying for everyone' brand thought had been diluted. "But what the brand did for the industry still remains: it brought about the low cost model which is here to stay," Gopinath concludes. For some, he opened up the skies. For others, he created a trap from which the airlines can't seem to extricate themselves. Either way, the Indian skies were never the same after Air Deccan came on the scene.