Dubai: Indian carrier Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, said on Monday that it has opened its first overseas sales office in Dubai to tap into the growth in travel demand from business travellers and Indian expatriates.
“The Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC], specifically the UAE, is an important market for Vistara’s growth strategy outside of India,” Phee Teik Yeoh, chief executive of Vistara, said in a phone interview. “The UAE is one of India’s largest trade partners … if trade improves, travel will grow. We would like to be able to tap into the growth expected to come from improvement in trade ties between the two countries.”
Bilateral trade between the UAE and India currently stands at $60 billion (Dh220.30 billion). India is the UAE’s second-largest trading partner and the UAE is India’s third-largest trading partner after China and the United States.
The UAE-based Sharaf Travels was appointed last month by the airline as its general sales agent for the GCC to sell its services and tickets for services within India.
The Indian start-up carrier does not fly to the GCC or any other international route at present because it is not eligible to do so.
“There is a 5/20 rule in India which prohibits Indian start-ups from operating overseas. One has to wait for five years and have a minimum of 20 aircraft. But as we speak, the government is looking into amending the rule so that the waiting time to operate overseas can be shorter than five years,” Yeoh said. He added that Vistara is interested in launching services to the GCC.
The airline currently has six aircraft (Airbus A320s), and plans to take delivery of three more by November, bringing the total to nine. By 2018, it aims to expand its fleet to 20 A320s.
Vistara said last month that it has flown 500,000 passengers since it launched commercial flights last January.
The airline has 321 weekly flights to 12 destinations in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Goa, Guwahati and Bagdogra. Starting next month, it will also fly to Bhubaneswar and Varanasi.
Vistara has already received Rs5 billion in funding from Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, which is part of the Rs6 billion funding commitment announced in 2013.
