Naresh Goyal is one of the top businessmen and an eminent personality in the Indian aviation industry. He is the founder and chairman of Jet Airways. Jet Airways is the largest domestic airline of India after the downfall of Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) with more than 30 per cent market share.
Early Life: Naresh Goyal was born in Sangrur in Punjab in the house of a jewellery dealer. He completed his graduation in 1967 and then he joined as the General Sales agent to a travel business company, Lebanese International.
In 1974, Naresh founded the Jet Air Limited that is used to serve many international foreign airlines partly as a tour operator which provided various travel plans and courier plans to other countries. His company used to look after the sales, ticketing and marketing operations of the foreign airlines. He was involved in the development of routes, performing profitability studies on the routes, operational economics and flight scheduling. Major airlines that were served by his company include Lufthansa, Aeroflot, Air France, Biman Bangladesh, Oman Air, Singapore Airlines and much more. Because of his rich experience in the flight operations that he gained in his company, he decided to start his own company that would operate various flights across the different parts of the country.
Formation of Jet Airways
With the opening of Indian skies for the private players in 1991, Naresh Goyal wasted no time in forming the Jet Airways and started its operations on 5th May, 1993. The company then operated with one four leased aircrafts from Boeing. The company then applied for the status of scheduled airlines and it was granted this status on 4th January 1995.
The company got listed on Bombay Stock Exchange in 2005. Based on the IPO response of the company, the Forbes magazine has ranked Naresh Goyal as 16th richest man in India.
Air Sahara Acquisition
The company added another armour in its arsenal in 2006 when the company acquired the Air Sahara for a reported amount of $340 million. This all cash deal further strengthened the reach and position of Jet in India. The Air Sahara was renamed to JetLite which is a low cost subsidiary of Jet Airways. In 2008, the company announced that it would integrate JetLite into Jet Airways.
Jet Airways Subsidiaries
The company has two subsidiaries besides from the main airlines operations. These subsidiaries are aimed at the low cost aviation sector.
JetLite: This wholly owned subsidiary of Jet and was formed after the acquisition of Air Sahara.
Jet Konnect: This low cost airline is aimed for domestic operations and has been given the same designation as that of Jet Airways. This subsidiary is aimed to tap the loss making routes and divert the planes to more profitable routes. This is a no frills airlines where no food or drinks are served to the passengers.
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