We're making private jets more accessible: JetSetGo

JetSetGo, which recently received funding from cricketer Yuvraj Singh-backed YouWeCan Ventures, is an aggregator of private aviation business. Kanika Tekriwal, the co-founder and CEO, and a cancer survivor, has worked for close to a decade in the aviation industry with companies like Indiabulls Aviation and Aerospace Resources Ltd (UK). She shared with Shahkar Abidi that the company is creating market place that joins the dots between charter customers and operators on one hand and service providers with operators on the other.

What was your inspiration to start JetSetGo?
I have been working in the aviation industry for the past 9 years from a time when private jets in the country were far and few. Besides India, I have worked in the UK and have seen the industry grow (and shrink, of course) and learnt a thing or two about the industry. JetSetGo is the result of this varied experience. Over these years, I noticed the frustration of customers while dealing with charter brokers and operators. Anyone wanting to use a private jet would ideally contact a broker or an aircraft operator either based on personal recommendation or the results Google showed them. These brokers 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, he would be pitched an aircraft solely operated by that operator. All of this finally leads to customers chartering lesser or being unsatisfied despite this being high-value purchases. I said let's go, change all this.

You came up with the startup after overcoming personal hiccup in the form of cancer. What was your mental make up while you were still recuperating? Was entrepreneurial ambition on your radar then?
I belong to a typical Marwari family and entrepreneurship is in my blood. I always knew from a young age that I would be running a business of my own at some point or the other. In fact, cancer kind of worked in my favour since my parents were all prepared to pack me of into a nice Marwari family just before I was diagnosed, which would make my chances of doing business near zero. But then, cancer happened and I knew this would turn around my life and let me set up every business I want to. The year in treatment served as the perfect break to think over what I wanted to do and mull over all the ideas I always had. Entrepreneurship was always on my radar and cancer helped me fast-track my way into it.

Cricketer Yuvraj Singh recently invested in your company. How and why did he get interested in your startup? Did the fact that both of you at one point of time have been victim of cancer brought you on the same page in any way?
Yuvraj Singh and the fund weren't quite aware about me having suffered from cancer when they signed up with us. We were at a shoot at Yuvraj's house months after the investment was closed when we were talking about making healthcare affordable when I suddenly said "Yeah PET Scans" should be top on the priority list, I pay far too much for them. He had this blank look on his face and asked "Why are you going for PET scans?" I then told him, "Oh, we've been in the same boat" and we instantly connected over it. So, cancer definitely wasn't the connecting point. I read about YouWeCan and told my co-founder Sudheer that maybe they should be our first fund since they look like more than just a fund. Sudheer through his ex-PwC colleagues got in touch with Yuvraj's chief investment officer Nishant who did a call with us in the wee hours of the night. The call literally lasted 50 minutes during which the synergies to all were very clear. YouWeCan saw us to be a game changer in this space and were on board.

What kind of investors typically take interest in such business, and why?
We are not a business typical VCs investing now in India would want to step into at this stage. Aviation is an industry most people look at skeptically. Add luxury to the mix, which not many in India have been able to nail, it increases this skepticism further. Also, typical VCs consider us niche, high-ticket or even unapproachable since we are not a business they see themselves using. Whereas hyper local, food delivery, etc,. are businesses they use in and out. Once we do scale up and the broader play gets more obvious, we would then attract a lot more interest from this genre of capital. At this point, we are attracting substantial interest from customers wanting to invest, HNI family offices and from some international funds who see the value in what we are doing internationally.

What is your revenue model, commercial arrangement, and is there a likelihood of this changing as more and more people start using the service?
Our revenue at the moment comes in from the flights we do – the percentage varies on the amount of value add we do in each flight and what additional services we offer. Our major revenue comes in from the new models we are introducing such as empty leg flights, private jet and helicopter experiences, etc. We roll out new services and experiences every month, constantly innovating to make more people fly and bring costs down. With each service, our revenue increases and the model inflates. As we bring more users to the mix and increase market size, the commercials are bound to increase and newer models will be utilized. Ultimately, its all about disrupting and dis-intermediating the industry.

How is your company trying to fan out to exploit the opportunities or challenges ahead?
I personally believe a good business takes over existing demand whilst a great business creates demand. JetSetGo's mission revolves around just that. On one hand we are capturing market share by catering to existent private jet and helicopter users who were not using JetSetGo and on the other hand we are enabling users who have never used private jets to use them and experience them. For example, today we sold an empty leg to a customer who just wanted to experience a private jet. It costed him 20% of what it actually would have.

Who are the people who use your service and why?
The current mix of users consist primarily of corporates, HNIs and UHNIs, celebrities, and emergency response service users. Apart from the emergency response service users, most customers are repeat customers and accustomed to travelling on private jets. Corporates utilize them to get from place of business to business, primarily to tier 2 and 3 cities which are not connected by commercial airlines. Whereas HNIs / UHNIs, apart from business, also utilize these for leisure to attend personal affairs and go on leisure trips. 4 cities, 5 meetings, 1 day – only a private jet can make this happen.

The private aviation business has not grown much in India mainly due to very high price and lack of transparency? How do you expect to change that with your venture?
These are the exact two pain points we are targeting in phase 1 of the business. As far as high prices go, we are using unique models wherein we locate aircraft closest to the customer, sell their empty legs in exchange of a cost cut and of course, increase hourly utilization to ultimately reduce costs. Transparency seems to be a bigger pain point which we are addressing through the platform – giving the customer the right choices at the right prices. We are finally bringing to the customer all the backroom knowledge about aircraft from age of the aircraft to what the correct prices are and how much flying time do they actually take, etc. It's turning into a slow educating process and people's eyes are actually opening up and going wow – this can happen too.

How big is the empty leg flights segment in India and what is your company doing as an aggregator to make the market grow?
Empty legs unfortunately haven't been marketed or exploited well in India. It's quite surprising but that's where things stand or rather stood until we stepped into the game. Before we started marketing them as aggressively as we are, no one really paid attention to them. Operators for some reason never considered them an asset and customers didn't really care that selling these could make their flights cheaper. We begin our day by calling in operators to remind them to list their empty legs and further send out extensive mails telling our regular customers and TAs about the offerings available. Apart from that we are also marketing them aggressively to a cross section of society who ideally cannot afford to use a private jet. All of this put together results in a new market by itself. We are also launching a new plan for empty legs, which is currently under construction.

Uber revolutionized the taxi hailing market. According to you what will it take to repeat the similar feat in private aviation business? Do you think, something like this can come from India?
Absolutely. Why it's going to come from India is simply because if we can crack the Indian market with all its typical regulations and shortcomings – developed markets are cake walk for us. JetSetGo will be the go to global one stop shop for private jet and helicopter charter.

What is the size of the company at present and where do you see it going in the 3-5 years?
At present, we are about 14 full time people core management – we should be about 150 in 3 years, with a presence in at least 16 more countries.

How much amount of fund raising has been done till date and what is its utilisation? And, what are the plans for future?
We are in the process of closing a new round and I am unfortunately not in a position to disclose the numbers and names. Let's just say we have enough in the bank to keep our plans going and get us where we want to over the next 2 years.