Digitising Business Aviation 101: Kanika Tekriwal on How It’s Done

Dreaming of flying helicopters to work from rooftop helipads as you please, developing software to predict what airplane spare part may require maintenance and more – Kanika Tekriwal, CEO of JetSetGo (JSG) is in year 3018 while we have just entered the new year 2018.

The company, a plane aggregator that operates, manages and flies planes for owners, is already four years old and is raring to be completely digitized by 2020. “In this day and age when everything is available on a phone, it’s surprising to see that apart from JetSetGo, no one is doing anything on a phone. I can’t even order my handling without typing a mail or making a call. I should ideally be able to press 2 buttons on an app and it should all happen. But then, adversity results in opportunity right? So, a lot of time, what’s worked in our favour is that when others are screwing up and not doing anything, we go ahead and do it to change the way things are working,” she says. Tekriwal’s aerial plans started young with the dreams of becoming a pilot but since that didn’t work out, she found new ways to stay in the aviation biz.

So, did you manage to fulfil your dream to fly?

No, not really... there hasn’t been any time to learn how to fly. I think I’ll get myself a PPS (Preflight Planning System) soon.

Tell us how JetSetGo’s star investors Yuvraj Singh and Puneet Dalmia came on board?

That’s actually a funny story, we were speaking to Yuvraj’s CIO (Chief Information Officer) Nishant and he was interested in JSG. He pitched to us instead of us having to do that...like he told us the pros of taking money from Yuvraj and why it will work out. So it ended up being an investor pitching to the company rather than the other way around. And still, I wasn’t quite convinced about it at all, so I asked for a few days time to think over it. I finally just made up my mind and we closed everything over a 40 minute call. That’s all it took to close all the funding.

We were very young, this all happened within six months of us starting out. I think he liked the idea of investing in aviation first and secondly he thought we were doing things differently having flown himself...he saw the big change we were trying to make and the opportunity.

Puneet was a customer. He did a few flights with us and really liked what we were doing. And again, with Puneet too there was no discussion, no negotiation, whatever we asked for, we got.

They all are really happy, Puneet has invested a second round of money and then a third round.

Do you think the GDP number for this fiscal year will affect BA?

I think that’s really true, you got to have rich people for these planes to fly. Over the past few years, our economic growth has been negligible...negative almost. So, which is why I feel the industry hasn’t grown as much as it should have. However, this shouldn’t always been looked as a negative. You need to reinvent products, make it cheaper, open it to a bigger market and not make it economy dependent because let’s face it, the need for travel is never going to stop.

Do you foresee any engagement with RCS (Regional Connectivity Scheme) for BA?

Not RCS but we are launching something called JetSetShuttles, which basically gives seats on a private jet connecting areas that are not easily connected as well as category 1 routes. The reason we are doing this is because we can reduce the time spent in travel. A major part of shuttle service are helicopters connecting areas within 100-150NM of metros to industrial hubs. Because the vision of the company is to enable the fastest personalised travel from point A to B whether we do it with private jets, helicopters or drones. We just have to keep figuring it out as we go along but the main aim of shuttle is to enable smaller number of people to achieve efficiency. We are looking for an April first week launch.

What helicopters are you planning to use for JetSetShuttles?

India is a very phobic nation as far as single engine helicopters are concerned. So, we are doing twin engine six-seater helicopters right now and will be selling the seats from anywhere between 10,000-25,000 per seat.

Phobic is a strong word...so what needs to change?

Ughh..it’s a touchy topic. But I personally believe that the sector is very, very over-regulated and behind the facade of safety...we are actually not looking at safety at all. So, I don’t think Indian skies are very safe, to be honest. But the biggest change that needs to be brought about is to have more professionals in the regulatory authority rather than bureaucrats because you need to have a knowledge bank that understands what the aviation industry is going through and bring about change. This is just a general macro-level view. But at the micro-level, business aviation is treated just like commercial airlines for all rules and regulations, framework etc. There are no different laws or regulations for the private aviation industry. The nature of the industry is completely different, the only thing similar is that they both fly planes. So, we are working very hard with the government for a regulatory framework that enables and promotes private aviation. We are also trying to make them understand the .1% of India that actually enables and balances the 99.9%, and controls the GDP is the audience we cater to. So, if we don’t enable them to travel 5 cities in a month for work, the country is not going to progress. It’s going to take 3-4 years but the change will slowly happen.

Do you face any competition from private charters? Who will you classify as your rivals?

Pricing-wise, we may not be the cheapest but our biggest differentiator would be our fleet positioning and fleet size. We’ve got about 24 aircrafts that we offer to the market. Every time a customer needs to be picked up from the middle of nowhere, we always dispatch the closest possible plane so, the ferry leg that the customer incurs is drastically lower than any other operator. Our biggest USP is that we guarantee an aircraft, so, even if none of our fleets are available, we will buy it from the market or do whatever but every customer gets a plane.

Heli-tourism or renting private jets for a few minutes of joyride has become the latest trend. Do you think there’s accounting for safety in such ventures?

I would refrain from commenting but I feel helicopters haven’t been utilised in our country. Look at São Paulo and it has 800 helicopters in the city. I had gone to visit my friend in São Paulo and we went from her house to the office in a helicopter. It was so simple, there were no clearance, no rigmarole. I think they shouldn’t be used for things like joyrides, they should be practically used to go to work and carry passengers. Why are we not building helipads on rooftops? All of Delhi is a no-fly zone. São Paulo has twice the amount of crime and equivalent safety issues, but at least people can fly their damn helicopter any which way. Why can’t we do that here?

India is the country with maximum number of women pilots in the world. Do you have some advice for ladies looking to make it big in the aviation field?

India is not the most conducive country to be a woman and run in this industry. You are assumed to be a cabin crew whether you’re a pilot or a CEO. However, things are changing. We are also trying to put a woman pilot in every cockpit of ours which is a challenge because a lot of our customers and plane owners are not open to it but we are trying.

Behind the facade of safety, we are actually not looking at safety at all. So, I don’t think Indian skies are very safe, to be honest.

I think it’s more difficult for women because you get asked a lot of weird questions like what if you get married, what if you have children, how will you fly etc. I think you got to overstep all these odd questions and just give it back to the person asking such things.

Do you get these questions?

Oh all the time! There’s no comeback strategy. I’m just very clear that it’s my life and let me do what I wanna do. It’s not a very easy industry for women pilots especially non-scheduled.

Tell us about your expansion plans.

On the aviation side, we are trying to build a software right now which does preventive maintenance by telling you what’s going to go wrong with your aircraft next, how you can fix it, what spare parts you should be stocking up, etc. One of the biggest goals at JSG is to ensure lesser downtime for the aircraft. We are doing a lot of innovative maintenance right now, where we repair parts before their time, without giving them a chance to get spoilt. We are also working on a software that helps us reduce fuel consumption. Hopefully by 2020, we would be completely digitised.

How about an app to replace you?

That would be a great idea. I’m going to build a clone...a robot to replace me. No, not yet, I don’t think you can take the humans out of the business. My team is my biggest strength, however, there’s a lot in aviation that cannot be done by humans like predict what’s going to go wrong in your aircraft. No one in private aviation has so far understood data and use it as a resource. We have been a very ad-hoc industry with a ‘theek karo, chalayo’ mentality but JSG is trying to change that.