Other than the load factors, Gopinath’s tenure as chief executive was defined by his devotion to growing as fast as possible. Deccan, under him, was adding planes to its fleet at a rate of almost one a month, sometimes even faster, making it one of the fastest growing airlines in the world. As the fleet size swelled to about 40 airplanes, Deccan started flying to locations such as Dharamshala, Rajamundhry and Bhavnagar, over time making Deccan the biggest airline in terms of airports serviced.
“We fly to more places than Jet Airways and we fly more people than Indian Airlines,” Gopinath boasted in June of this year, when Air Deccan nudged aside state-run Indian to become, briefly, the second biggest airline in India in terms of passengers carried.
Gopinath's almost manic desire to add routes was often the cause of clashes with Warwick Brady, his ex-chief operating officer, two officials at Deccan confirmed separately. Brady, who left the airline in May to become the chief executive of Indonesia’s PT Mandala Airlines, had tried unsuccessfully to convince the board of directors to give him the authority to cancel unprofitable routes, delay the deliveries of A320 planes for the rest of the year, and return or sell back at least five smaller turboprop aircraft that serviced unprofitable routes, these officials said.
Today, six months after Brady’s departure, Sundaram has done just that—returned three of the five ATRs, taken the other two out of service, juggled deliveries around, and barely added any significant new routes. He also said he was looking at ways to rationalize fleet growth.
“I would rather put it this way, that there was a stage when we needed critical mass and to grow fast and we’re now in stage where we need to consolidate our operations and our network,” he added. “We need to grow, but we need to get profitable growth.”
Gopinath said on Thursday that the slowing down of the airline’s growth was an idea that he supports, and that it makes great business sense. “You need to balance between profitability and growth,” he said. “There is no point in growing when you are facing excess capacity in the scene. Referring to slowing downthe growth, I would have done it myself when all airlinesare bleeding.”
And at least one investor, who holds a sizable stake in the company and asked not to be identified, said he welcomed Deccan’s slower expansion. “Gopinath gave us the speed,” he said. “And now Mallya will give us the profit.”
In Bangalore, on a lane named after Vijay Mallya’s father Vittal, Gopinath lives in the shadow of the junior Mallya’s mansion. Mallya, for whom people often use polite synonyms of flamboyant as descriptors, is in almost every possible way the anti-Gopinath. Or as Gopinath put it, while Mallya wooed him to buy a stake in Air Deccan, “He is from Mars, I am from Venus.”
For those looking for metaphors, the fact that Gopinath’s mail arrives with Mallya’s father’s name on the envelope might be delicious. But for those who watch Deccan and its suddenly volatile stock price, Mallya’s embrace of Gopinath is even more important, because in the past few months, it has become no less than a bear hug.