IndiGo Airlines, Vice President, Strategy, Neha Narain at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit World 2024

Transcript

Neha Narain:So I think the Indian market, there's something that we call the demographic dividend, which is in terms of the large population size that we have. Also, just in terms of the average age of the population being very young, the growing middle class. So we are expected to also be the 3rd largest economy in the world by 2027. So I think it's a combination of all these factors and also the purchasing power as it's increasing. There are more and more people who are willing to fly. At the same time, the cost consciousness of the Indian consumer is something that makes it different from some of the other markets out there, which is why the model that IndiGo started off with has worked really, really well for this market. So that is something which has displayed a lot of growth in the past few years and is expected to continue. That momentum is expected to continue over the next decade or so. So I think there's always other airlines who are also trying to get a piece of the pie. Like I said, it's a huge opportunity and a market for all of us. Even though we've spoken about the massive size of the market in terms of it being the 3rd largest market, It's still very, very underpenetrated. So I think when you come from that space, having more than one player who are trying to kind of together grow that market is, is in a way beneficial for all the players involved. So I think when we speak about the targets, we've said that what we've done in the last 18 years, which is achieving a 100 million passenger number, we are going to double it in the next 6 years. So when we look at FY23 as a reference point, We are going to double in size and capacity in terms of the number of destinations, in terms of number of passengers. So I think that's quite a target in itself that we've taken upon ourselves. Needless to say, execution is one thing that we will have to really be focused on. While we talk of execution, the cost-consciousness approach that has worked well for us so far, we expect to kind of be very mindful of that going forward. Also, just in terms of some of the ecosystem-related challenges like infrastructure. So there is a bit of a catch-up that we are doing there, even in terms of the regulatory environment. The good thing, however, is that the government is very, very supportive and positive, and there is a lot of development that is happening on the infrastructure side, on the regulatory side. So I think those are all things that we need to constantly work towards as an ecosystem.

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