What Sanjiv Kapoor teaches about brand purpose

Regardless of business model, the airline seat is the ultimate perishable good and doesn't matter whether you're LCC, full service, whatever you are, you need to maximize your load factor. You know, so the first question from SpiceJet to Vistara, you've been, you've spent a lot of time now in the Indian airline aviation industry. What are a few of these characteristics that sets India's aviation industry apart from other markets like the US and even China,

which is sort of developing but still has a massive aviation sort of? Actually, I don't think there's that much differences. The US, China and India also are all huge domestic markets. They have, especially the US, India have a lot in common. It's a very segmented market. You have all kinds of segments from very premium to complete ultra low cost. Customer behavior is also similar. You know, those are price seekers, what they expect from, you know, value for money, etc. China too, similar.

You've got multiple segments there. So the three markets are very similar, but in terms of customer expectations, in India, customers expect even more for the rupee. Whether you're buying an ultra low cost ticket or whether you're buying a full fare ticket or whatever, customers expect absolute top not service and all the frills and amenities to come with that. So it takes a little bit of education. You know, we started recently in Vistara something called branded fare families where the lowest fares

call economy light don't have meals. So to educate customers that that's the way, that's the trend, that's the way all airlines are headed, all markets are headed. So when Vistara was started a few years back, I mean, clearly you choose to do things a little differently than what was happening in that space. At that point, one of the largest full service carriers was Jet and India, of course. And LCCs have been doing like well in India, sort of helping the market grow. Yes.

What are some of the insights that you took back from the market and figured out that these are the things that we don't want to do, we want to do this sort of a little differently and this will sort of help us set apart as a product, as a brand in the market? Well, you know, Vistara is a full service airline, that too, a premium full service. So clearly, we do things differently, but there are certain rules that are universal regardless of which business model you follow, which is that

within your business model, you must have very, very strict control of costs. The second is, you know, regardless of business model, the airline seat is the ultimate, ultimate perishable good. Perishable. And it doesn't matter whether the LCC, full service, whatever you are, you need to maximize your load factor. Right. You need to make sure you minimize the number of seats that go empty because you can't sell it again later. And therefore, different airlines use different revenue management

tactics and we certainly don't want to go down the path of extreme discounting because, you know, Not only is that- Hurts the brand. It hurts the brand and also, it is, you know, we need to be more thoughtful about covering a cost. Right. But at the same time, no airline in the world can afford to be flying around with too many empty seats. So those, some basic principles apply to that across. I mean, I love the experience in Avestara versus other airlines. Let's not name other players. But there's this very beautiful personal touch that you sort of go

that extra mile if- when needed to please the customer. And that's great. I think every airline, regardless of business model in India, definitely wants to go the extra mile. I think they all- all the marketing, all the training is around service because India is a very, very service-sensitive market, you know, like I had said, because regardless of what fare you pay, you expect top service. So the difference is in execution, you know, and the secret sauce that we may have

to make the experience on our flights, the soft experience, the service aspect, more consistent, Right. more delightful and, you know, with his own charm, etc. And it's a secret sauce that I think sets us apart basis, the customer feedback we get from other airlines. I don't want to go into details, but you know- But it's a differentiator. Yeah, you need to make sure that you execute and you have something special about your service. So, you were- very sort of your quick view on the regional aviation space. There's a lot of focus

at a government level and some of the players are also sort of following as to develop regional aviation. How do you think that is playing out in India? Is there a viable opportunity today, tomorrow? I think it's extremely important that smaller cities and towns get connected and get airports. I think that's fantastic what's going on. The bottleneck though remains the big airports because most of the travelers from the smaller cities and towns- and I've been saying this for the

last five years- most of the travelers from the smaller cities and towns want to either travel to the big cities or through the big cities- connect through the big cities. And the big cities are still very capacity constrained, especially the two biggest which are Bombay and Delhi. More from the air side as well, right? Yeah, runway capacity primarily, terminal capacity, now parking bay capacity. So, until those get sorted out, I think there will be- there will be a limit

to how well these new airports can do because they need connectivity to the big airports and that is the challenge. So,