Having a private jet is the ultimate milestone of luxury that almost every wealthy person tends to achieve. Yet not everyone manages to have one as it involves a lot of factors to own one, apart from having the money.
One woman from India has made it happen and she now owns a staggering 10 private jets of her own!
Named Kanika Tekriwal, the woman set up her own aviation-based startup after defying cancer, parental opposition, and casual sexism at the age of 22.
She wanted to fly planes, but her family suggested she open a bake shop. So instead she got the million-dollar idea of owning planes.
After 10 years, this high-flying entrepreneur owns 10 private jets under her company JetSetGo – India’s first and only marketplace for private jet and helicopter charters. With this, JetSetGo has been credited for transforming the charter plane sector in India.
Also, read: JetSetGo: From Fighting Cancer To Building India’s First Online Marketplace For Private Jet Charter
“I had the idea brewing in my head for close to three years or so, but when I took out my sketch board and started working on it, I was diagnosed with cancer, which set me back by a year. Luckily for me, nobody else in the country had gotten around to doing something similar until I finished treatment or until now,” shared Kanika.
In her Instagram bio, Kanika Tekriwal describes herself as a “small town girl” with massive dreams which she is surely fulfilling.
But the journey was not an easy one for Kanika as she was born in a traditional Marwari family where women were not encouraged to work. Tekriwal has always been a passionate woman so she made it her mission of making private flying more accessible and economical, and she overcame all those odds to set up JetSetGo, which she started in 2012 with her friend Sudheer Perla.
JetSetGo: Uber of Indian Skies
The startup, often referred to as the Uber of Indian skies, identified problems with chartering planes that no one had done before, and used innovative technologies to make the process easier for customers. They used a mix of tech, unique maintenance procedures, and SMART management to ensure profitability and reduce maintenance costs while making it easier for customers to book charter flights.
“We expected rich plane owners to list their planes and customers to book them from our platform, but our first flight never took off as the pilot didn’t show up. That is when I realized that a booking platform solves only half the problems. Slowly, we became an aircraft management company and once our charter demand exceeded the supply available, we decided to buy our own airplanes and there was no looking back since,” she said.
JetSetGo is now pioneering air taxis with intra-city connectivity in India using electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. This helps reduce maintenance cost, increases airtime, and decreases ground time, thereby ensuring profitability. It also reduces the cost of chartered aircraft substantially, making them more readily and frequently accessible to flyers.
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Kanika also noticed that the industry of privately chartered planes was filled with brokers and operators and that surely needed to change as anyone who wanted to use a private jet would have to contact a broker or a private operator, who would recommend jets or helicopters, which give them maximum commission, irrespective of the client’s requirements.
“Due to sheer lack of transparency and non-availability of charter planes, customers pay astronomical amounts. Similarly, if the customer contacts an operator, they would pitch an aircraft solely operated by that operator,” Kanika explained.
Her revolutionary ideas, game-changing business acumen, and her sense of humor are what give JetSetGo its wings.
“We are looking to democratize air travel,” concluded Kanika.