Akasa Air to expand operations in SAARC and Middle East: Co-founder Aditya Ghosh

Aditya Ghosh, co-founder of Akasa Air, spoke with CNBC TV18 about the company's explosive growth and its aspirations to expand worldwide on the sidelines of the 19th Motilal Annual Global Investor Conference.

Ghosh spoke on the expansion of Akasa's fleet to meet the 'burgeoning demand' for air travel after being asked about the company's recent order of 72 aircraft and its plans to increase capacity.

We are now finalising a triple-digit order, therefore a minimum of 100 units would be appreciated. Ghosh predicted that the 176 planes that will be on order by the end of the year would be sufficient to meet the industry's rapidly growing demand for a long time to come.

Ghosh also mentioned that the airline doesn't have any internal standards or targets for market share right now, and that he thinks giving "affordable fares consistently" to passengers will assure a gain in market share on its own.

I believe it is crucial that you maintain a ruthlessly low-cost structure, as this will allow you to provide your clients with consistently inexpensive fares. Customers appreciate the effectiveness and warmth of the service, and Ghosh predicts that the company's market share will increase as a result.

Ghosh also mentioned the airline's future aspirations to expand internationally in the coming months. As far as Ghosh is concerned, Akasa's launch into foreign service is the "fastest" of any Indian airline. He went on to say that the airline was planning to expand its foreign services to include the countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), South East Asia, and the Middle East.

Ghosh explained that the planes' five- to six-hour range was chosen because it "is ideally suited not only to our type of aircraft but also to where the demand sits," meaning that they would serve the SAARC countries as well as those in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Ghosh stated that the company was purchasing high-capacity Dash 200s to meet the growing demand from abroad as part of the airline's worldwide growth plans.

According to Ghosh, "we are beginning to get our Dash 200s," also known as Boeing 7378-200s. "Even in our original 76 aircraft order, two-thirds of it is the higher capacity Dash 200s," he continued.

Ghosh added that the airline was prepared for the increase in crew size by having a flexible workforce that could be moved between domestic and foreign operations.

To move capacity between international and domestic routes, "we are a single feet type, disciplined sort of operation," as the co-founder put it. "We don't have to start thinking about multiple different types of aircraft, multiple different types of crew, and so on and so forth."

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